by Nic Stone
But our skyward sailing certainly was not smooth.
Note: I must make some caliber and ballistic adjustments so that the vessel will make sharper turns, and the shifts in flight angle won’t be so jolting. K’Marah experienced more nausea than I would’ve expected on our admittedly turbulent way through the forest.
Speaking of which: There is definitely something amiss in my beloved country. I fought hard to convince myself that my assertion above the plain was the truth—that the generals were gathered to discuss the final preparations for Challenge Day.
But our forced reroute—I couldn’t risk flying over the plain, even while invisible, any more than we could’ve waltzed across it, especially with Okoye there (informant!)—revealed some other troubling oddities.
We went through the mechanized security forest on the southern border with Niganda, and I was able to use my Kimoyo beads to control the trees and create a wide enough path for us to pass through—up to a point.
Then we were attacked by a small grove. Of trees.
It shouldn’t have been that surprising: The forest was designed to hide Wakanda from aerial view and to prevent intruders from getting in.
But I wasn’t expecting the branches to begin lashing out and shooting laser beams at us. Especially since I should’ve been able to override them.
The first blow was like a slap on the Panther Mobile’s—excuse me, Predator’s—rear that shot us both forward and sideways. “Whoa!” was all I’d been able to manage. The laser caught us on the side. This time, the Predator herself spoke up: “Warning, damage sustained to left flank.”
Once I regained my bearings, I was able to dip, dodge, and maneuver around the arboreal swings coming at us, and even fire off some kill shots of my own (so glad they were mechanical), but once we were through that rough patch, I noticed some other … abnormalities.
For one, along our path, I had no problem distinguishing the natural trees from the mechanized ones—largely because a number of the natural trees were lacking their typical vibrancy. In fact, as we closed in on the border itself, we passed a cluster of trees that were glaringly dead. The trunks were the brooding dark gray of angry storm clouds, and the branches gnarled and leafless. And I can’t be completely sure because we weren’t close enough for a concrete observation, but it seemed the entire deceased copse was spotted covered with a strange yellow, like some giant had upchucked all over it. It was almost as though they were covered in mold spores … not unlike the soil around the dead heart-shaped herb plants.
Then once through the forest and officially in Nigandan airspace (without permission, oops), we passed over what looked like a small encampment about half a kilometer from the border.
Which I would’ve thought inconsequential had it not triggered an alarm. “Warning: vessel detected,” claimed the incongruously dispassionate mechanical voice. Which made my skin prickle as though covered in spiders.
Because being “spotted” should’ve been impossible. We were in full Invisi-mode, which not only involves the mirroring technology that mimics the appearance of the surroundings, but also a series of Vibranium silencers that create a small vortex of soundlessness around the Predator, making its movement undetectable to the human ear.
We should’ve been invisible and inaudible.
Not only undetectable, but also untraceable.
Which now makes me wonder: What was that encampment, and who does it belong to? Wakanda or Niganda?
Or someone else? Are the Nigandans allies, or would they wish us harm?
And what is happening to the trees? Is it the same plague that is destroying the heart-shaped herb? Will it slowly eat away at our forests as well?
I must get to the bottom of all this.
Here’s hoping my next log has more answers than questions.
And now Shuri can’t relax. The flight to Kenya is approximately one hour and twenty-six minutes in duration—twenty-three of which have already elapsed—and the princess should be working on both acquiring permission to land, and finding someone to alert the queen of Shuri’s intensely impromptu impending visit.
But every time she blinks, she sees the image that popped up on her security screen after the alert rang about the Predator being detected in flight: the head and shoulders of a man with his head tilted back and his hand against his brow, shielding his eyes. The picture is colorless and grainy (note: Upgrade the vessel’s security cameras), but Shuri can see that he was wearing dark sunglasses and a solid-colored kufi cap on his head.
And if the tilt of his chin and the direct frontal shot of his face in the photo are any indication, there’s a good chance this mystery man did see the Predator as it flew overhead.
But how?
T’Challa called shortly after they crossed the border, and although Shuri quickly deflected with a text message about being in the thick of a fabric test, he’ll definitely call again. And she’ll have to mention what she saw.
But what exactly will she say?
She peeks at the image of the man again—it’s still glowing in the bottom-left corner of the console screen—and huffs.
“Will you sit down?” K’Marah grumbles from where she’s reclined on one of the fold-down, fully adjustable beds in the open space behind the cockpit. She’s “recovering” from the motion sickness she claims to have experienced on the ascent, but it hasn’t escaped Shuri’s notice that K’s had a Kimoyo card in her hand since they reached ten thousand feet in altitude.
Said card chimes with an audible buzz of vibration, and K’Marah giggles in a very un–Dora Milaje–like manner.
Which sets off a different set of alarm bells in Shuri’s head.
“K’Marah, who are you talking to?” she asks.
“Hmm?” K’Marah swipes and flicks and taps away … and then raises two fingers in what Shuri recognizes as the American hand gesture for peace, and snaps a photo of herself.
“WHO”—now the princess rises—“are you talking to, K’Marah? And what are you telling them?”
“Don’t loom,” the other girl says, sticking an arm out to prevent Shuri from getting too close. “If you must know, I’m talking to a friend.”
“Named?”
“What difference does it make, Shuri? It’s not like you know him.”
Him. “So it’s a boy?”
“Bast, you’re worse than Okoye. AND Grandmother.”
“This is serious, K’Marah! What if this boy is using the IP address of your Kimoyo card to track our geolocation? Does he know you’re with me?”
K’Marah rolls her eyes, then shifts her focus back to her device. “Are you planning to be this way for the entire trip? If so, please take me home—”
The Kimoyo card slips from K’Marah’s grasp as Shuri plucks it out of her hands.
“Excuse me!” the shorter girl cries, leaping to her feet.
Which makes Shuri take a step back. Yes, the height advantage is hers, but the princess is under no illusions about who would win this fight. Again. She almost hands the thing back just to avoid any escalation. But …
No. This is important. Tantamount to their safety—and that of Wakanda, in fact.
Which as a Dora in training, K’Marah should know.
So she stands up as straight as possible. “K’Marah, I need for you to tell me the truth. We are risking more than you know by going on this trip.” (It’s more than Shuri knows, too, but of course she doesn’t say that.) “And I’m not referring solely to how grounded we will both be if my mother or your grandmother finds out about it. Not only are our lives at stake, the welfare of Wakanda is, too. As a rising Dora, you’re supposed to be as dedicated to the security of our country as I am.”
Now K’Marah huffs and crosses her arms. “You’re such a killjoy,” she says, turning her face away and dropping back down onto the bed.
“K’Marah—”
“If you must know, his name is Henny,” K’Marah continues, unprodded. “We ‘met’ on the message thread of a P
antherTube video about Krav Maga—”
“Krava what?”
“My word, you are hopeless.” K’Marah shakes her head. “It’s a form of mixed martial arts developed for the Israeli Defense Forces. Henny made a rather insightful comment about something in the video, and so I commented on his comment, and he commented back, and so I commen—”
“Okay, I get it,” Shuri says. The Predator wobbles just the slightest bit, and Shuri peeks over her shoulder at the autopilot readings to make sure they’re still on course. (They are. And the radar readings look good, too. They should be smooth sailing into Kenyan airspace within seventeen minutes or so.) “So you had a conversation. Then what?”
“Then nothing,” K’Marah says with a shrug. “I haven’t met him in person and don’t really intend to. I only know he’s Jabari because he told—”
“He’s Jabari?! Are you out of your mind?”
“You know, to be first in line to the throne, you sure do sound prejudiced. The Jabari are Wakandan, too.”
If the princess could turn red, she’d be the bright crimson of a lithium chloride flame. “That’s … not what I meant.” (Though of course it is. Could she have meant anything else?)
“Yeah, okay.”
“And,” Shuri says as a justification light bulb clicks on inside her mind, “let’s not forget: They may be Wakandan, but the Jabari have chosen to cut themselves off from the rest of us. They don’t submit to our rule.” They are, however, still permitted to challenge the sitting sovereign for the throne. And Shuri supposes that does make it a good idea to be nice …
“Oh, boo-hoo.”
A plume of rage balloons up inside the princess, and temporarily turns her vision the color of blood. “This is precisely why I didn’t want to bring you! You’re so flippant about everything!”
She watches the words land, punching not only the smugness but also the excitement right out of her friend’s face. And instantly, Shuri wishes she could take them back.
K’Marah … crumples. “I’m sorry, okay?” she says, turning away. “It won’t happen again.”
Shuri’s eyebrows pull together. There’s a quaver in K’Marah’s voice now that she wasn’t expecting.
Then K’Marah sniffles and swipes at her eyes.
Now Shuri is really nervous. And not entirely sure of what to do. Her area of social expertise is with artificial intelligence, not crying best friends. “K’Marah? Are you okay?”
And the shorter girl sighs. Heavily. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this, Shuri.”
“What do you mean?”
“This Dora Milaje thing. Part of the reason I said yes to you was to get a break from all that. I want to be a Dora, yes. But I also want to be a kid. Who goes on fun adventures. With friends.”
“Oh.”
“I overheard some of them talking about me,” K’Marah continues. “A few of the older trainees.” And now she looks up at Shuri. “They said I’m ‘too flippant.’ Same way you just did. That I’m only there because of Grandmother’s position. That she got me in. That part’s not true: I worked and trained hard, and tested well. But what if they’re only allowing me to stay because of who Grandmother is?”
Shuri doesn’t immediately respond to that.
It’s not like she doesn’t understand where K’Marah is coming from. She opens her mouth to say something comforting—I mean, I’m not exactly princess material, am I?—but then there’s a BUMP that jolts the Predator so intensely, both girls are knocked sideways.
“Oof!” Shuri exclaims.
K’Marah clutches her stomach and drops down onto the edge of the fold-down bed. “Oof, indeed—”
There’s another bump.
“Is that going to keep happening?” K’Marah says, now stretching back and draping an arm over her face. Shuri notices an ornate, charcoal-colored, glass-beaded bracelet beside K’Marah’s Kimoyo one. Of course the glamour girl managed to add something ridiculous and impractical to her drab Merchant’s apprentice getup.
Another bump.
Shuri completely loses her balance this time, and stumbles into the passenger cockpit chair. “It shouldn’t be happening at all—” She breaks off to carefully make her way into the captain’s seat.
And once she does, and her eyes alight on the weather radar screen, she’s very glad to be sitting already.
They’re not merely headed straight into a storm—one that was wholly absent when Shuri looked not ten minutes ago. It seems the storm is trying to engulf them.
Which can’t be right.
With a slide, swipe, two-finger rotate motion, and tap tap tap on the navigation touchscreen, the princess makes some quick adjustments to the altitude level and flight path. It won’t pull them completely out of the tempest, but they’ll skirt the edge of what would be the most turbulent portion.
Then her gaze is pulled back to the weather radar screen … and she watches in combined awe and horror as the storm changes paths as well.
“This is not happening,” Shuri mutters under her breath.
Another bump. “Get strapped in, K’Marah,” the princess says as she does the same. “If you need to remain in a supine position, there are harness components that pull out from the sides of the bed.”
K’Marah just groans.
“I’ll do my best to dodge the worst parts, but things are definitely about to get … bouncy.”
And bouncy they do get. In fact, the whole experience brings to mind some American thing called pinball that Shuri learned about in her Foreign Cultural Studies course just this previous quarter. Except that is a game, and this … certainly isn’t.
Her Kimoyo beads light up, and a robotic, but oddly soothing, masculine voice fills the cabin: “T’Challa, aka Big Head Brother, is calling.”
Shuri has zero intentions of answering, of course—he would totally hear the turbulence with his hypersensitive, heart-shaped-herb-enhanced auditory capabilities, and would no doubt have a cattish conniption—but knowing he’s calling does shake a memory loose in the princess’s mind.
T’Challa a few years back, sitting at a random table in the palace kitchen. Awestruck and chuckling and munching on plantain chips. “You girls are really something,” he’d told her with a shake of his head. “I go to surprise the stunning apple of my eye, and almost lose my life as a result. Can you believe that?”
Shuri hadn’t answered.
“I tell you one thing, baby sis,” he’d gone on, “if you ever decide to fly over Kenya, brace yourself …”
That’s when she slows the vessel to a complete stop, shifting into hover mode, and smacks the button on the dash that will make them fully visible and alert anyone in the surrounding area to the Predator’s full surrender.
Almost immediately, the storm begins to retreat on the weather radar screen, and the livid gray skies all around the girls and their high-tech, flying cat-ship dissipate.
Shuri exhales.
When the clouds right in front of the Predator part to reveal, not another plane, but a person, Shuri smiles. Apparently the girls won’t have to find Shuri’s contact: She just found them.
“Whoa,” K’Marah says as she makes her way forward and takes in the brown-skinned woman dressed in black, with white hair and flashing alabaster eyes, who has emerged in front of them.
Floating. In midair.
“Who is that?” K’Marah continues.
For a moment, Shuri doesn’t say a word.
And when she does finally speak? It’s barely above a whisper: “That,” the princess says, “is Queen Ororo.”
At Ororo’s instruction (“Wait, Storm? As in the X-Man … well, X-Woman Storm? You know her?” K’Marah said once she’d put two and two together), Shuri lands the Predator on the outskirts of a village a handful of kilometers inland from the city of Mombasa. By the time the girls disembark, Ororo is flanked by two very muscular men in T-shirts, tan shorts, and sandals. They’ve assumed a royal guard–like stance: feet planted marginally wider than
shoulder width, hands clasped behind their backs with arm muscles flexed, chins slightly elevated.
“Okoye would lose her mind if a Dora Milaje showed up for duty dressed so casually!” K’Marah whispers as the girls approach their hostess. “Maybe I should request to transfer here …”
“Will you shush!”
“I’m just saying!”
“My dearest Shuri!” Ororo says once Shuri and K’Marah are within hearing distance. “What a pleasant surprise!” She spreads her arms and Shuri walks into them.
“Unbelievable,” K’Marah gasps from behind.
This makes Ororo laugh. “And who might you be?” She releases Shuri and steps forward to extend a hand to K’Marah …
Who is frozen in place. Her eyes flick down and lock onto the Kenyan queen’s extended hand, but she doesn’t budge.
“You can shake it,” Ororo says with a smirk. “Since you’re a friend of my favorite princess, I won’t electrocute you. This time.”
A tinny squeak escapes K’Marah’s throat, and everyone (except for her)—bodyguards on chill included—bursts into laughter.
“Ororo, this is my friend K’Marah—”
“Her best friend,” K’Marah says, suddenly back to herself. “It is an honor to meet you, Ms. X-Woman Lady Storm.” She grabs Ororo’s hand and gives it a firm pump.
“Ororo is fine, dear. And that’s, uhh … quite a grip you have there.”
“Oh!” K’Marah pulls her hand away. “Sorry!”
Shuri smiles to herself. She could get used to this bumbling idiot version of her “best friend.”
“Come, we’ll go into town.” Ororo gestures for them to follow her. “Your aircraft will be safe here.”
The girls comply—after Shuri puts the Predator back in Invisi-mode (can’t be too careful)—and trail the white-haired queen and her guards to an open-topped truck propped up on overly large wheels. Once everyone’s inside, the man in the driver’s seat uses an actual key to crank the engine.