by F. T. Lukens
Ren stood at the open airlock. Sweat prickled at the back of his neck and rolled over his skin. The humidity was an oppressive blanket and it settled in his lungs with every breath. He craned his neck to look up. “We’re not flying out of here.”
Rowan stood at his shoulder. “No, we’re not.” She flinched away when a loud caw echoed close by. “This is too much nature.”
“What is this place?” Lucas asked, standing on his toes, peering out over Rowan’s shoulder. “And what is that?”
Ren shifted his gaze to where Lucas pointed to find the largest snake he’d ever seen. He yelped as it slithered close to the ship with its the smooth scales shining brown and black. Ren jumped back. He slammed the door, eyes blazing blue, arms tucked close to his chest.
Rowan raised an eyebrow. “I’ve seen one of those in a drift zoo. It’s a snake. Right?”
“I don’t like snakes.” Ren shuddered. “And that thing was big enough to eat us.”
“They eat humans? Unreal.” Lucas adjusted his goggles. “So, no wandering around without a buddy then. Not that I would. Too much… fresh air and dirt and danger.”
Ren rolled his eyes. “We need to find the Phoenix Corps base where Asher is being held. I doubt it’s around here though.”
“Use the sensors. See if you can pick up a settlement.” Lucas leaned on the bulkhead. “You know what Corps tech feels like, right?”
Ren nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“But even if we’re close, I don’t know about traversing this...” she waved her hand.
“Jungle,” Ren said.
“Jungle.” Rowan pursed her lips. “It’s thick and there are things out there.”
Lucas snorted. “Never thought I’d see my captain afraid of a little dust.”
Tugging on her braid, Rowan narrowed her eyes. “Oh, really? You think I’m afraid?”
Lucas held up his hands. “I think everyone should have a healthy fear of planets. Seriously. Who likes dust and dirt and… fauna.”
“You know you’re coming with us now, right?” Lucas sputtered out a protest, but Rowan raised her hand. “Save it. We’ve determined we don’t need a pilot, but we will need someone proficient with maps.”
Lucas wilted. “You’re not joking.”
“No.”
“Aw, stars.”
Ren snickered. Lucas punched Ren in the shoulder, and Ren stumbled into the wall. He leaned on it heavily and rubbed the sore spot.
“If we’re done acting like children,” Rowan said, glaring, “we need to prepare. Ren, use the sensors and see what you can find. Lucas, get ready.”
Grumbling, Lucas headed for the bridge. Rowan patted Ren on the shoulder. “Are you going to be able to hike through a jungle? You’re still weak.”
“I’m better. I can do it.”
Rowan sighed. “I’m not going to argue.”
She read in his expression that he was not going to be left behind. He was going to rectify his mistakes. He was going to find Asher even if it took hiking through a thousand jungles and encountering a thousand snakes.
“Find him.” She headed for the stairs. “Find him, then we’ll plan.”
Ren left the cargo bay and ended up in the common room. He slumped onto the couch, closed his eyes, and relaxed into the worn cushions. Maybe after everything was over Ren could convince Rowan to get a new couch.
Ren tapped into the comms. “Lucas, watch the vid screen. I’ll put what I find on there.”
Lucas responded with a mutter of acquiescence.
Flooding into the ship’s sensors, using them to boost his power, Ren reached out in a circle from the ship and gradually expanded the perimeter. He didn’t have to travel far until he was overwhelmed with feedback from tech. A cluster of ships, a comm tower, and a docking platform were nearby, they were merely… up. Beyond the canopy, almost directly above them. It was promising, but not what he was looking for.
Brows knit together, Ren pushed out farther until he encountered more signatures. A small town, maybe? Not Phoenix Corps—Ren didn’t recognize the tech.
He didn’t know how much farther he could go, but he ballooned outward, ignoring the transports that flew from the ground to the spaceport and the kitchen appliances that whirred on the edge of his consciousness and the messages that hovered in the air. Frowning, he scanned and spread and there! A ping of a Corps weapon! Ren pulled his circle in, then focused on that direction, and shot out in a line. Corps tech flooded him. Weapons and generators and forcefields bled into him. Communications buzzed beneath his eyes, and vehicles hummed in his chest, and data pads tickled over his skin.
Ren threw the information on the vid screen of the bridge and listened over the comm to the rest of the crew’s reactions.
“I’ve got it, Ren,” Lucas said. “You can pull back.”
Ren snapped into his body like a rubber band and tipped sideways onto the couch.
“That is cogging weird,” Darby said from her perch on the table. “Your eyes glow and your face goes totally blank.” She waved a hand in front of her nose. “Like you’re not there at all.”
“You’re calmer now,” Ren said.
Darby waved her hand. “I needed my moment of escalation, but I’m good now. I think. I’m more curious. If I had punched you, would you have felt it?”
Ren blinked. “Uh… yes?”
“You don’t sound very sure.”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Try. How does the freaky science-magic work? And why do they…” She lifted her chin in the direction of the hallway that led to the bridge. “…get all jittery when you do it?”
“They do?”
“Are you kidding me? They’re like a rare-meteorite peddler in a room full of thieves. You know… skittish.”
“I understood the metaphor.”
Chin in her hand, knees bent, she shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. You’re a duster. You have different frames of reference.”
Ren didn’t want to have this conversation lying down and grudgingly pushed to a sitting position. “There is always a price to… freaky science-magic. I need to have an anchor, or I might forget that I’m human.”
Darby’s mouth thinned into a line. “Okay. And I’m guessing someone on this ship is your anchor.”
Grimacing, Ren looked away. “I lost my anchor. But I’m going to get him back.”
“Ah. That explains a few things. I think. Maybe. Okay, not really.”
Ren sighed. He rubbed his temples. “I haven’t been well, and my perceptions of some situations were wrong. Part of that was someone manipulating me. The other part was me and how I panic sometimes. And I scared the crew. I scared myself.”
Darby wrinkled her nose. “But they trust you.”
“I think so.”
“That wasn’t a question.” Darby brushed a lock of her dark hair behind her ear and leaned in. “They may get skittish, but they trust you. They trusted you to get the information from that data pad. They trusted you to get us through that locked door on the drift. And then they trusted you to transport us across the cluster. And now, they trust you to find the missing crewman.”
“How do you know that?”
She waved her hand. “Gaining trust is kind of my specialty. I learned how to recognize it young and how to exploit it. Don’t worry,” she amended hastily. “I’m not trying to pull anything on your crew. I’m not addled.”
“Thanks,” Ren said drily.
She pulled back. “I don’t get it, though. Why do they put so much faith in someone who scared them? How can they believe in you?”
“Because they’re good people. They’re my friends, my family.”
She threaded her fingers and rested her chin on them with her elbows planted on her knees. “Huh.”
“Yeah.”
The
y sat in companionable silence. Darby dropped into a chair and bounced her leg on the deck plate. Her gaze was far away. Ren saw someone different from the cocky thief with the big mouth who had stolen aboard their ship looking for a quick credit. He saw a vulnerable young woman who readily left a drift with a bunch of strangers because there wasn’t someone for her to run back for and save from the chaos. He saw a girl who questioned kindness and didn’t quite grasp forgiveness. He saw someone who was as lost as he sometimes felt.
He was glad of the quiet and leaned back into the cushions of the couch. He was scared of what he’d find or wouldn’t find beyond the thick crush of nature that surrounded the ship. Was Asher really here? Would they be able to find him? Would they be able to free him? Would he want to be freed? Was he even trapped?
Before the doubts could completely creep in, Ollie’s voice boomed over the comm.
“All crew meet in the cargo bay. We’re going exploring!”
* * *
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Lucas said as he followed Ollie. For once, his goggles weren’t tangled in his brown hair, but were pulled down onto his face. In his hand he held a data pad that guided them. Their path to the village was a winding red line, and they were a blinking blue dot. “If I die, take my body to space and eject me into the nearest star. Please ensure my constituent atoms are able to roam the cluster freely and aren’t trapped on this dirt hole.”
“Stars, Lucas, I didn’t know you could be so dramatic.” Rowan walked behind him and picked her way through the overgrowth. “Does Pen know this side of you?”
“Of course she does.”
“I guess what they say is true then.”
“What’s that?” Lucas asked as he swatted away a large bug. He ducked and shrieked when it swooped at his head and then took off for a higher branch.
Rowan’s lips lifted in a small smile. “That love makes fools of us all.”
“Hey!”
Ollie snorted.
Ren rolled his eyes but couldn’t argue. Asher had done things for him that couldn’t be classified as rational, and he was tromping through a teeming rain forest on a hunch that Asher may be nearby.
Using a modified welder and a large knife they found in the cargo bay, Ollie cut a trail. In some parts of the rain forest, the canopy blocked all light and thus the growth on the floor wasn’t too difficult to maneuver through. Other than the trunks of skinny trees, there weren’t many obstacles. In other areas, where light did filter through gaps, the group encountered thick undergrowth that snagged their clothes and grew higher than their knees, sometimes their waists.
Ren, certain he’d disturbed some animal’s nest, grimaced as he trudged through the small opening Ollie had made. They’d seen the huge snake, and Ren had added colorful frogs, birds with magnificent plumage and loud caws, and something that had growled at them from a perch. He hadn’t caught of glimpse of it other than patterned fur, but Lucas had dropped the data pad and almost jumped into Rowan’s arms at the sound. Ren’s skin had prickled, and he’d wished he hadn’t turned down Rowan’s offer of a pulse gun.
It was difficult to determine the passage of time, since the sky wasn’t visible and the light seemed filtered, so, when the trees became sparse and the edge of the jungle was discernible, Ren was surprised to find it was twilight.
Rowan frowned. “Bara has short days.” Thunder rumbled above them, and rain smattered the leaves. “And frequent rain storms.”
“Great,” Lucas mumbled. He clutched the data pad to his chest. “We’re close. Finally. That village is ahead; the Corps camp is a little farther. There should be a road.”
Ren huddled into Asher’s jacket and tugged the collar higher around his ears. They trudged forward, breaking out of the jungle into a clearing.
Before them, the metal of buildings rose from the landscape and gleamed in the last of the sun’s rays. Houses made of wood and stone dotted the perimeter. It wasn’t a town, but a city, and it was certainly bigger than Ren’s village had been. It nestled between the rain forest on one side and a ridge of mountains on the other. Roads and buildings sprawled outward following the contours of the land. Craning his neck, Ren spied the towering space port; transports floated to land somewhere in the middle of a cluster of buildings. Along the ridges of the mountains, the sunlight reflected from structures, and Ren followed the line of development which connected the main part of the town in the basin with the buildings on the ridges all the way up to a bridge built out of the side of the mountain connecting to the spaceport. This gave access by both air and land to the platforms. It was genius.
“Wow,” Rowan said, shielding her eyes, as she also stared at the construction. “Who knew dusters could be so…” she waved her hand, looking for the word.
“Smart is the word you’re looking for,” Lucas said.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Ollie said.
Ren huffed. “You’re all so arrogant.” He pushed past the others and headed into the town. “Come on.”
They passed a line of clothes becoming damp in the drizzle. Rowan tugged a dark cloak off the line. She tossed it to Ren.
“You and Ollie are going to go check out the Corps encampment. Lucas and I are going to stay here. I want to talk to a few locals.”
Furrowing his brow, Ren wrapped the cloak around him. He pulled up the hood. “Won’t you be noticed?”
Thumbs hooked into her pockets, she shook her head. “A town next to a spaceport with the Corps nearby, they’ll be used to travelers.” She scanned the city’s outskirts. “We’ll maintain comm silence until you contact us. We’ll meet back here.” She leveled a hard gaze at Ren. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Ren bit back a frown and nodded. “Yes, Captain.”
“Good.”
Lucas smacked the data pad into Ollie’s chest. “Don’t break it. It’s precious to me.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
Rowan sighed and rolled her eyes. She pointed her finger at Ren then at Ollie. “Nothing stupid.”
Ollie and Ren skirted the city, which took longer than either of them would have guessed. The sky darkened, and clouds and thunder rolled ahead. Three sister moons glowed in the sky. Despite the descent of the sun, the heat didn’t abate, and sweat rolled down Ren’s skin, followed the curve of his spine, and gathered at his temples.
Transports whizzed past them, and they walked around carts pulled by small work animals, but the farther they went, the more the population thinned. Once they were the only ones on the road, Ollie tilted his head and Ren joined him to dart into a patch of trees.
“It’s just up ahead.”
“I know.” Ren tugged on his hood and concealed his face, except the burning blue of his eyes. The power generators from the camp thrummed under his skin. The warning beacons surrounding it pulsed in his ears, and forcefields hummed in his chest. The ping-back from weapons threatened to overwhelm him, but he centered his power with thoughts of seeing Asher again. He swallowed hard. “I can feel everything.”
Ollie flashed him a concerned look, and rested his hand on Ren’s shoulder. “We’ll be all right.”
“What if he’s not here?”
Ollie lifted an eyebrow. “Then we’ll look somewhere else.” His fingers squeezed. “We won’t stop searching for him.”
Fear clogged Ren’s throat. His muscles tingled with fatigue. He felt pinched and drawn, and his senses were drowned in tech.
“Let’s go.”
Ollie and Ren approached the Phoenix Corps camp—a bustling makeshift city of temporary housing—under the cover of the surrounding trees.
Ren sweated beneath his clothes; the rain only made the atmosphere muggy. Insects as big as Ren’s palm flew between the thick towering trees. Occasional howls and calls from local fauna cut through the silence of the night and sent chills down Ren’s spine.
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Ren’s body tensed beneath his borrowed cloak. Clouds swept across the sky and obscured the stars, but one of the moons hung low and reflected the nearest star through breaks in the canopy to illuminate their path.
They skirted the perimeter, scouting the area, taking stock of the encampment. It wasn’t large like the citadel on Erden, rather the size of a village, but the power it generated was overwhelming. Ren did his best to catalogue the buildings and the tech signatures, feeding the information into the data pad. They’d decipher it later and form a plan.
Ollie and Ren picked a path in the brush that ran to the muddy earthen road connecting the city to the Corps encampment. Following it, they came around a sharp bend and stopped short.
In front of them sat a small cargo ship with the symbol of the Phoenix Corps emblazoned on the side and several Corps members. Ren hadn’t picked up the signatures from the transport or their weapons because his senses were flooded by the generators and the forcefields of the main camp.
Scrambling, Ollie and Ren ducked into a large pile of brush. Mud clung to Ren’s pants, and thorns caught on his cloak, but he didn’t dare move, almost didn’t dare to breathe as he peeked through the dense crush of foliage. He fervently hoped he hadn’t bothered any of the local wildlife, especially any snakes. Ollie crouched, his large body bent double as he clutched his pulse gun. Ollie held a finger to his lips, and Ren nodded.
Squinting, Ren made out four individuals in Corps uniforms around a small shuttle and a hovercraft that reminded Ren of the floaters back home. Pulling his power from the main area, Ren focused on the shuttle. It was old and damaged and had lost power. The smaller hovercraft hummed with low power, enough to float, but not near enough to make it to the spaceport towering over them a few miles away. Three of the four guards carried weapons, and all four wore comms.
“Did you hear that?” one of the Corps members asked, turning around to survey the area with weapon drawn.
“How could I hear anything over your complaining?” another one said. “You haven’t shut up since we left the main base.”