"Maybe for you," I said. "But I feel like someone strapped a couple of house cats to my feet."
"Snowshoeing will get you there, but it's slow as you've already learned. Unless you're Tabitha, that is," Little Pete said. "See my pack over there? We brought skis and the snow is perfect."
I'd heard of skiing before but had no experience with it. The idea that I was about to learn another winter sport didn't exactly appeal to me, but if skiing was easier and faster than snowshoeing, I was all in.
"How many did you bring?" Marny asked.
"Four sets," Pete answered. "After about a ten-day, Dad realized you were in for trouble with the snow and sent us out."
"Always the smartest man in the room," I said.
Tabby, Marny and Little Pete all took turns cutting trail, as they called it, while I struggled to simply keep up. By the fourth day and with Tabby carrying my pack, my HUD showed that I was maintaining a pace of three kilometers an hour. Not unlike hiking, the most treacherous portions of the trip were the steep downhills. I managed to get through admirably, although not without some spectacular falls.
"It's warming up," Marny said, joining me where I sat on a fallen tree, catching my breath. We'd traveled two hundred fifty kilometers in the fifteen days since Tabby and Little Pete had caught up with us. Our faster pace was due to the shade cast by Bluetop Mountain on its western slope. Without that protection, the snow atop which we were skiing would no longer have been around.
"Sure makes for fast skiing. Although I'm not looking forward to the climb," I said. We'd been working our way into the foothills of Bluetop and the grade had been increasing the last few days. At some point skis would no longer be practical.
Little Pete joined us and settled into a crouch, as was his nature. "Hand me your skis. Tabitha says we're out of the snow in a couple clicks. Snow isn't deep enough for shoes. If we hit it hard, we're only two days from where we got turned around last time," he said.
"I would kill to walk on flat ground," I said.
"Careful with that," he said. "We're being watched. Scatters might think you're serious."
I was surprised by his announcement. "Really? My suit's sensors are struggling, but I haven't seen even a hint of activity."
"Scatters are sneaky," he said, thoughtfully scratching his thick black beard. "Hard to see them if they don't want you to. You can hear them in the woods, but if you want to see one, you have to look up. The scouts are always in the trees."
I couldn't help but scan the trees around us. As expected, I found nothing.
"Two days, you say?" I asked, feeling little anxiety about the trek ahead. Living on Fraxus had been nothing but constant exercise and my once-depleted body was hardly recognizable. Probably more surprising was that I was stronger than I’d been prior to Anino’s latest betrayal. I thought I’d been in relatively good shape before leaving Mars, but my former spacer physique was nothing in comparison to the lean muscle earned on the mountain.
I unstrapped my skis and stood, testing the ground. It was slippery, but my grav-suit boots responded to the terrain and adjusted, giving me an aggressive tread pattern complete with small spikes. I drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "No time like the present in that case," I said, picking up my skis and heading up the mountain with a quickened step.
"Fargin right!" Little Pete said, catching up with me and grabbing my skis. "Use your poles, you'll go faster."
"I got 'em," I said, not allowing him to take the skis. "Maybe help me strap them onto my back?"
"Can do, Cap," he answered. The man was hard to dislike. It had taken me a long time to admit to myself that he was going through the same thing I was with Tabby. He’d handled it better. If the stakes weren't Tabby, I might have found myself pulling for him.
Fraxus was surrounded by two moons, both of which were quite large. Little Pete had cleverly named the biggest Big Moon when he’d been a few years old. Between the snow in the valley and the light reflecting down from the moons, we had a good view of the trails going up and around the mountain. I pushed the group to continue climbing until Marny finally put a stop to it.
"Cap, there's no value in wearing yourself out," she finally said. "It's getting too hard to see."
I was about as tired as I could ever remember being and it wasn't hard to convince me to stop. Instead of an elaborate camp, we made a small fire and ate some of our dwindling food stock. We’d made a conscious decision to push on instead of stopping to replenish our supplies, knowing that with the late fall warmup we'd be able to forage for food much easier once we reached Bluetop's eastern slope. That side of the mountain, we hoped, would be fully melted, even if it had been hit by the latest storms.
Leaning against my pack, a meter from the fire, I overheard Tabby giggling quietly as Little Pete said something to her. I must have grimaced because Marny caught the look and called me on it. "You doing okay, Cap?"
"Tired is a good place to be," I said. It wasn't entirely true. Physical exertion was good for the body, but if you were stewing on a problem, the mind could use the distraction to endlessly circle around and invent unpleasant thoughts. One saving grace was that sleep was easy to find.
"It'll work out," she said, shifting her pack so she lay closer to me.
"Wish I was as confident," I said as I did, indeed, let sleep swallow me.
"Rise and shine," Tabby said, hunching down next to me. For a moment, I was back aboard Intrepid and everything was right in the world.
"Geez, how can I be sore again?" I complained, accepting a length of jerky from her.
"Climbing is a lot different than skiing," she said. "I've already been up to the pass this morning. There’s an amazing view."
I shook my head. We were ten kilometers from the pass and she was admitting to having already run twice that distance to get there and back. "Any Scatters?" I asked.
"None that I saw," she said, helping me to my feet. "You want to tell me how you're planning to negotiate with them?"
"I have no fargin idea." I'd adopted Little Pete's curse word and smiled as it rolled off my tongue.
As usual, the first hour of the morning was tough going as my muscles and tendons complained about the previous day's activities. By mid-morning I was making good time and could even see the top of the pass, which crossed over a saddleback ridge running between Bluetop mountain and the next peak to the south.
It was almost exactly mid-day when we crested the final rise on the path and finally saw past the mountain we’d been struggling to climb for days. It was a spectacular moment.
In the extreme distance – sixty-eighty kilometers to be exact – I could make out the coastline of a foamy green sea to the north. Just as Tabby and Little Pete had described, a sparkling city lay nestled around a deep blue bay that appeared anomalous with the abutting sea. The sheltered inlet was so different it was a curiosity and given the distance, could easily be some sort of optical trick. I scanned the hillside back from the city toward where we stood. A wide river ran along the valley and disappeared into the terrain below.
My heart skipped a beat as the AI highlighted an ambiguous signal from Ada's suspension chamber. Somewhere in the valley, Ada was alive and well, but my suit could do nothing to pinpoint its location.
"I'm getting a signal from Ada," I said.
"Can you magnify?" Tabby asked. "What about the ship?"
My AI heard her question and scanned the city, displaying a negative result.
"Nothing on the ship," I said. "I'm sure it goes without saying that under no circumstances are we to get physical when we run into the Scatters."
"I think you've made that point," Tabby said petulantly. I nodded. There was no good way to have the conversation.
"There's some chance they'll try to take one or more of us prisoner," I said. "Let them. At least let them take me."
"We stay together," Tabby said firmly.
"You good with this, Marny?" I asked.
"Copy that, Cap," she said.
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I took off down the path that quickly widened, apparently from constant use. The alpine rocks underfoot were dry and we kicked up dust as we walked, leading me to believe the snow might have been limited to the Juba Valley and hadn’t made it over Bluetop mountain.
"Last time they stopped us right at the tree line," Tabby said, walking next to Little Pete and allowing me to take the lead.
The oxygen was sparse at our current elevation, which my AI calculated to be near four-thousand meters. The fact that we were finally going downhill made it a much nicer trek and we chewed up the two kilometers to the edge of where trees were able to grow.
"There's a group approaching," Little Pete warned. A moment later my AI displayed ten contacts on my HUD.
"Why don't you guys stay here a minute," I said, unslinging the pack I'd insisted Tabby let me carry.
"Hold on, Cap," Marny said. "What if they restrain you?"
"You'll have to improvise," I said. "Personally, I'd want you to return to Nick. It could take me a while to work things out. But I also know you'd never do that. Try to follow me if that happens."
Tabby put her hands on her hips. "You've had how many ten-days to come up with a plan and this is all you've got?"
I shrugged. "What else is there? The Scatters have all the power. That hasn't changed in twenty years. We've got to talk. Until that happens, we're at stalemate."
"He speaks truth," Little Pete said, crossing his arms. "We will wait."
I raised an eyebrow at his assertive position, but Tabby reacted with annoyance. "Now you're on his side?"
"We tried our way. He will try his now," Peter said, settling down into a crouch. "We all seek the same result."
Tabby shrugged. "I suppose you're right."
I looked back and forth between the two. I had to give Pete a silent bravo. He'd unlocked the first level of Tabby, which was to help her get past the anger which often got in her way.
"Give me twenty minutes," I called over my back as I walked down the path to meet the gathering Scatter troops.
"Gefarren halt!" Nick had taught my AI all the words he'd been able to learn from chance encounters with the Scatters over the years. The AI also had Jonathan's adaptive translation algorithm. Even so, I was surprised it already had figured out one word – halt. On my HUD it showed a ninety-two percent likelihood that word was correct.
"I come with peaceful intent," I said, untying the belt at my waist, and allowing the iron dagger to fall to the path as I continued forward. It had been a long time since I'd used the translator and found it momentarily disconcerting. The AI set up a canceling wave for the word peaceful and replaced it with a foreign translation that sounded something like fun chewy.
"Human … halt." The man speaking was taller than most of the others within the group. I'd never had a good look at a Scatter before and it appeared there were two distinct clans represented. Having seen my fair share of aliens, I really had no preconceived notions about what to expect.
The man who appeared to be in charge was human shaped, if not a little small. His skin was pale, and he had blonde hair, pointy ears and high cheekbones. He stood out from his companions, wearing what looked like a brilliant-green linen vest over a cream-colored shirt and brown leather pants.
Most of his companions were smaller, with swarthy brown skin and wore animal hides that were constructed with much better craftsmanship than ours. Each member of the Scatter troop had a crystal sword at their side and seemed evenly split between holding a bow or wooden shield. I would have named this species Elves rather than Scatters, but that was just me.
I stopped, having reached a distance where communication was easier. "I need to talk to your leader," I said, a little disappointed that my AI could only substitute for the I and left the rest of my speech untranslated. It needed further conversation to build a reasonable word bank. I tapped on my chest and gestured down the hill.
"… home …" the lead Scatter said. While speaking, he pointed at me and gestured up the hill.
"I cannot," I said. "My friend is in your city. She's in a suspension chamber where she is asleep. I need to wake her up, so she can live."
The AI translated a few more of my words, including suspension chamber, which caused the leader's eyes to narrow. Unfortunately, he simply repeated his previous demand that we go home.
"No, that is not acceptable." I stepped forward and the guard shifted. The four shield bearers closest to me drew their swords and blocked the path.
"… not allowed …" the leader said.
"My friend in the suspension chamber will die," I said. "I cannot go back without her. You must bring me to your leader. Take me as your prisoner and bind my eyes so I do not see your home, but please, I must find her. We will leave your home once we have found our friend."
"Go … not allowed …"
I bit my tongue. The guy had a one-track mind and I was frustrated with his insistence. I turned around and walked back to where I'd dropped my belt and knife. Withdrawing the knife from the belt caused the guard to shift audibly and I was glad no arrows found my back. I dropped the knife back to the ground and wrapped one end of the belt around my wrist as I turned to face the guard again. With some manipulation and the use of my mouth, I managed to loosely tie my hands together.
"You will take me prisoner," I said. "You will take me to your leader and we will talk. My friend sleeps in a suspension chamber and you have her. I will not leave."
I walked forward, resting my bound hands in front of me. The guards formed up and pushed their shields together. I was surprised that no swords were at the ready, but intuition told me the threat level could change in an instant. Their shield wall was sturdy and I couldn’t push my way through.
"Human … halt," the leader said, exasperation clearly in his voice.
"Take me prisoner. Let me speak to your leader," I repeated, closing my eyes and trying to push through the line. The ensuing scuffle lasted a full minute or two. With a shouted word that I assume came from the leader, the guard instantly separated. Unfortunately, I was still pushing and overbalanced. I ended up falling inelegantly to the ground.
"One human," the leader said. "… human … human … go."
I rolled over and stood up, my hands still bound. "I will tell my friends to go home," I said. "And you will take me to my friend in the suspension chamber."
"… not allowed ..."
I rolled my eyes and walked back up the hill. This guy and his not allowed was getting on my nerves. When I made it to the knife, I bent down and picked it up, having freed my hands from the loose binding.
"What did they say?" Tabby asked impatiently. "It looks like you got roughed up. I was about to come get you."
"Thank you, Tabby. They weren’t trying to hurt me," I said, giving her a reassuring smile. "There's good news and bad."
"Good news?" Marny asked.
"They've agreed to take me," I said. "But they won't take any more than me. They say you need to go home."
"No frakking way," Tabby said. "We just got you back."
"We could try to negotiate for more," I said, "but just one of us needs to find Ada. After that, we'll see. Worse case is, they send me away."
"You'd never make it back to us," Tabby said. "They might as well kill you here. You’d be just as dead if they sent you out over the mountain alone."
"They're civilized and peaceful," I said. "I'll cross that mountain when I come to it."
"I don't like it, Cap," Marny said. "I also don't believe you're asking for our opinion."
"I'm more than willing to take a risk to get Ada back," I said. "It's what every one of you would do in my position."
"Doesn't mean we have to like it," Tabby complained.
"Take your skis and snow shoes," Marny said, picking up my pack and transferring food from her pack to mine. "If you get stuck on the mountain, spend your effort gathering food. Don't worry as much about making distance. We'll watch for signal fires at first light as often a
s we can. Smoke trails can be seen for a long distance."
"I’ve got this, Marny," I said and turned back down the path. All of a sudden, I felt Tabby wrap her arms around me from behind.
"Don't you dare die on me, Liam Hoffen," she whispered in my ear. "I just got you back. I can't lose you again."
I blew out a hot breath. When I reached the Scatter guard, they separated, placing four men behind me and two ahead. The others, including the leader, stayed behind as I was nudged down the hill.
Chapter 10
Crystal City
I found it difficult to keep to the path, as my eyes were filled with the sights of the far-off city and my feet were forgotten. Just as Tabby and Peter had described, the city sparkled in the sun. Indeed, large birds did fly in and around the city.
We'd started downhill in the middle of the afternoon. The temperature in Bluetop Valley was considerably warmer than it had been on the other side of the mountain range. I supposed that the climate had a lot to do with the vast ocean growing larger with every passing hour. While ten degrees isn't warm, I found myself sweating. I was also short of breath from the exertion of carrying a heavy pack and trying to keep up with my nimble captors. Initially, I'd been almost jogging, concerned that the guards assigned to me would not put up with a slower pace. At some point, I had no choice but to resist the nudges from behind that were no doubt designed to speed me along. After the third such altercation, words had been exchanged and the group slowed to a more manageable pace.
"Human … halt … eat ..." The Scatter who spoke had taken a special interest in me, having walked next to me for most of the last several hours. He was only about a meter and a half tall. His gray-brown skin had an almost wooden texture to it. My first thought was how useful that coloring would be for camouflage in and amongst the trees. Perhaps that was the reason I’d never spotted them watching as we crossed the mountain.
As a group, the Scatters were quiet in every activity, rarely speaking. I often saw them communicate through small touches, tongue clicks, gestures, and whistles that sounded remarkably like the native insects that came out at night. I wondered if I'd been hearing real insects or if we'd been under observation by Scatters all along.
Privateers in Exile (Privateer Tales Book 16) Page 10
