“I’ll tell you.”
And with that the details of bismine prospecting came racing in.
Adan ran his finger along the edge of one of the lentes he wore. The green lenses over each of his eyes let him see through the dust-choked winds surrounding him as though it was a clear day.
He stood atop a long slope of rock gazing down at the exposed bismine vein at the base. It peeked out from a small depression, a little nub of orangish rock, nothing more. He might have mistaken it for a piece of rusted metal if he hadn’t been tracking its location.
The vein was just where he had expected it to be, based on the locus field emanations coming from the bismine shard he held in his hand. The emanations themselves were invisible, but Adan’s bioseine was able to read the otherwise imperceptible vibrations in the chip whenever he pointed it towards a large enough source of active bismine. In this way he could tell which direction he needed to go and the proximity of the nearest vein. From what Gavin had shared with him, all bismine shards functioned this way as long as they had at least some amount of energy left.
Adan made his way down the slope, nearly losing his balance when a sudden gust of wind blasted him from behind. He caught himself and managed to skid down the dune without falling.
Stopping at the yellowish patch of crystal embedded in the ground, he reached back and loosened the cutter strapped to his waist. He yanked the device over his forearm, then twisted his wrist. A bright slice of yellow light appeared at the end of the tube just beyond where his hand would have been. Because the cutter didn’t use esolace technology, he had to adjust a dial inside the housing with his thumb. He increased the blade to its maximum length, almost twice the length of the cutter itself.
Better hurry, he told himself. Might be a storm coming.
He sliced out large chunks of rock surrounding the glowing vein. He was careful not to cut the bismine itself yet because he didn’t want to kill the vein off completely. Bismine required light to grow. The vein might extend for a great distance below the ground, but if the surface crystals were ever covered or destroyed, the rest of the vein would slowly lose its power over time and become dead rock. It seemed odd to think that rock could grow in this fashion, fed by light, but that was how it worked according to the information that Gavin had given him. Adan recalled that the Welkin people who lived in the caverns beneath the desert had several rocks which they used for food and other materials. He wondered if those rocks grew as well.
The work with the cutter was practically effortless. Adan simply waved his hand and the gray bedrock fell away. Once he got knee deep in the ground, he shrunk the blade down to about the length of his hand and carved out two dozen shards from the lower parts of the vein. He placed the shards into a satchel he wore at his hip.
Once his work was finished, he stepped up out of the pit and headed back towards the compound, muttering a quick prayer of thanks to Numinae that they were one step closer to finding the extractor and Gavin’s memories.
Adan got safely back to the compound without running into any storms.
Gavin wasted no time in putting Adan’s bismine chips to use. After he inserted them into the chronotrace’s energy array, the device sprang back to life. Its yellow light reflected off the compound walls.
It was almost evening by the time Adan returned, so the two of them turned in for some much needed rest. The combination of the celerium coil and downtime tracing allowed the chronotrace to work for much longer periods of time, so they left it running through the night.
The next morning when they checked on the chronotrace’s progress, everything seemed to be going as planned. They made some atol and let the trace run its course.
Gavin said the trace would last all day. With nothing else to do, they decided Adan should head back out into the Vast to see if he could find another deposit of bismine. Gavin would stay behind and pack what they needed for their trip across the Vast, tracking down whoever had the extractor.
Adan did not return to the previous vein for fear of tapping it out, so he was forced to start his search afresh. It was a long, dreary day, walking up and down seemingly every dune within half a day’s walk of the compound, but he failed to find any more bismine.
When he returned to the compound, light was streaming out from beneath the shelter door. It was far too much for a simple lumin. Gavin was probably making a few last minute adjustments to the chronotrace.
When Adan opened the door, instead of seeing Gavin, he found himself face to face with a brown-haired man about his same height. His hair was short, like the style worn by the scientists at the Institute and his face was like theirs as well. But he wore a garrick instead of a lab coat, and his kaff hung loose at his throat. The most striking thing about him was what peeked out from underneath his scarf: around his neck he wore the silvery extractor containing Gavin’s memories.
Four
Following a Phantom
The stranger stared straight through Adan. He walked towards the shelter door as if he meant to leave whether Adan moved or not. It reminded Adan of the way people in Oasis looked at him without even acknowledging he was there.
He started to back out of the shelter, but at that moment, the stranger froze in mid-stride. That’s when Adan noticed Gavin watching the scene from the corner of the room.
“It’s only a trace,” Gavin said.
Adan felt foolish for having been taken in by the projection, but Gavin’s recent traces looked uncannily real.
“Who is he?” Adan wondered, studying the stranger’s face. He looked exactly like all the other people he’d seen from Oasis except for the eyes. There was an unusual intensity there.
“Hopefully we’ll find out soon enough.” The projection faded and Gavin rose to his feet. “Time to get on our desert gear. Are you ready for another journey?”
“I think so. At least this time we won’t have to walk.” Looking into Gavin’s strong, honest face Adan saw his own smile reflected there.
Although Gavin looked exactly like the scientists in Oasis, with their fine brown hair and cold gray eyes, there was a gentleness about him that put Adan at ease. Though their friendship had gotten off to a rough start, he now felt around him much the same way he had felt around Senya, his Welkin friend.
Senya…I wonder if she and her children are safe? Or if I’ll ever see them again. They had been forced to flee their underground home, but he had no idea where they had fled to.
The fate of his Welkin friends lay heavy upon him as he and Gavin strapped on their garricks and kaffs.
“I’ll meet you around back at the lev,” Gavin told him as he finished. He headed towards the door.
“Do you think the extra bismine chips will be enough?” Adan asked. He was still fixing his kaff.
“Yes,” Gavin’s thoughts continued as he walked out of the shelter, “They should last us a few days and we can always mine more if we run low.”
After Adan finished wrapping his kaff snugly, he helped Gavin load the supplies onto the lev: the shifter, the cutter, and of course, the chronotrace. They also brought along some tumblers of atol and canisters of mosh. Since they would likely have to make more slugs for the shifter on the journey, they also packed two small barrels of scrap. There was plenty of castoff machinery in the Vast, but they didn’t want to have to waste time stopping to collect it. They rolled up the tarp and put it on board to protect their gear—and themselves—during storms. Lastly, Gavin brought along a pair of lentes. They were only able to scrounge up the one set. The stranger had taken the other pair, along with the extractor and some desert gear.
“So what are we going to do if we actually find this person?” Adan asked as they stepped up onto the platform.
Gavin considered the question for a moment. “We’ll ask him to give us the extractor, I suppose.”
“Somehow I don’t think it will be that easy.”
“Somehow I think you’re right,” Gavin said. “But you never know which way the wind
will blow until you’re out in the storm. We’ll figure it out when we find him.”
Gavin connected his mind to the lev and engaged the power. The platform rose gently off the sand. The desert winds wafted across them, spraying sand on their kaff-covered faces as the lev rotated away from the back wall. In no time at all, they were rushing across the dunes, the compound lost in the distance.
Though the terrain rose and fell, Adan had little difficulty in keeping his balance. The lev kept itself as steady as if he’d been standing on solid ground, compensating for the dips and irregularities of the rolling dunes, always keeping about a body-length between them and the ground.
Following the stranger’s path as it had been mapped out in the chronotrace, they headed in the opposite direction from Oasis. This gave Adan mixed feelings. Part of him still wondered if the Repository had somehow remained intact, but another part thought it might be best if he never returned there at all. Right now, it didn’t matter, though. They had to find the extractor first.
They had intended to use the lentes to navigate through the night, but when a storm blew in close to dusk, they decided to wait it out. The lev was heavy, but riding high in the air it was vulnerable to under-drafts and risked being upended if the winds got too strong.
They fashioned a makeshift tent by attaching the tarp to the bars of the lev on one side and spiking the other into the ground.
The winds swirled around them as they consumed their evening meal. The gusts never grew strong enough to dislodge their makeshift shelter, but the constant fear that it might turn worse made for a night of uneasy rest.
Long before the morning light came they set off again, as soon as the storm died down enough to safely pilot the lev. The chronotrace continued to track the stranger’s journey, but it would take several more days before they’d be able to pinpoint his current location. Adan and Gavin had already traveled about the same distance as the stranger had over the first three days. From the trace, they could see he had traveled both day and night, only resting once for a few slices, but as he had been on foot and they were not, they would catch him eventually.
“He must have a bioseine,” Adan observed as he reflected on the incredible pace the man had kept. Adan had used his own bioseine in the same manner to keep up with the Waymen when he’d run with them, though never over such a long period of time.
“That would stand to reason,” Gavin replied.
Why had Will brought this man out into the Vast and left him in the capsule? Had he been part of the plan to destroy Oasis as well? It seemed like the only possible explanation, but Adan could not imagine what the stranger’s role would have been. Perhaps, since he wasn’t headed back to Oasis, the Developers had another city somewhere out in the Vast? That was an unsettling thought, but the longer the journey wore on the more Adan’s mind returned to it.
Late that afternoon they noticed a pair of storm cells forming, both ahead and behind them. They were separate systems, but they looked to be converging on their position. Even if they turned the lev from its present course, it looked like the storms would be too large to avoid.
The stretch of desert they were traveling across at that point was no place to be caught in a storm. The sand was strewn with gigantic pieces of machinery, some three times higher than the compound walls, far higher than the lev could fly. This would greatly reduce their maneuverability, forcing them into paths they might not want to take. Besides that, panels, rivets, and gears from the surrounding wreckage shook in the wind, ready to be set free once the wind gained enough strength. Spindly, wire-like tubes of metal lay scattered across the plain, like rusted grass. These broken needles swayed and creaked in the desert gusts, waiting to snap and be done with the long, slow, ache of decay. If the storm caught Adan and Gavin inside the ruins, the torquing winds might soon be filled with enough scrap to rip them both to shreds.
As they crested a dune between a pair of enormous rusted metal drums, Gavin pointed towards the storm off to their right.
“We’re not alone,” he informed Adan.
Adan stared into the sandy jumble of onrushing air, but without the benefit of Gavin’s lentes, he could see nothing but billowing sacks of dust. He reached into Gavin’s mind to look through the eyes of his friend.
Still some distance away, and shrouded in the massive dust clouds, were several figures. It looked like they were skating through the air, a short distance above the ground. Little trails of white light marked the path they had taken, but they lasted only a little while before fading. He could make out a dozen of them at first. Soon twice that number emerged from the dust clouds, several of them riding small floating vehicles.
Adan had never seen ships like these before. They were triangular platforms with sides that flared out and slightly upwards, forming an aerodynamic lip. Each also had a large, elongated black weapon mounted on the front. Whisper cannons. The echoes of their deadly blasts resounded in Adan’s memory. Two figures dressed in white rode on each of the vehicles, one seated behind the enormous weapons, the other standing behind a narrow column behind that.
Though Gavin had the lentes on maximum zoom, at first the figures were too far away to tell what they were. But from the color of their robes, Adan guessed they must be somatarchs, the empty, soulless servants of the Developers who looked human, but possessed no will of their own.
Gavin sent the lev swerving in the opposite direction. There was no way they could take on a force of twenty-plus somatarchs with whisper cannons. The approaching storms suddenly seemed like a safe haven.
“Somatarchs on attack skiffs and skimmers. What are they doing out here?” Gavin wondered. “This is completely against the Xenon protocol.”
“The Xenon Protocol?”
“Darius wanted to keep the presence of Oasis secret from the indigenous population of the Vast. Whenever we sent agents outside the city, they had to dress like the Waymen or Welkin and avoid any interaction with them. Barring that, they would eliminate anyone who saw them, ensuring that no witnesses survived.”
As the lev ate up the ground before them, Adan’s gaze remained fixed on the clouds behind. It was not long before the terrible creatures burst through and he could see them with his own eyes. It looked like they had spotted Gavin and Adan’s transport because they were headed straight for it. Gavin had the lev going so fast it was all Adan could do to hold on now, but still the somatarchs were gaining—rapidly. Their only hope seemed to be to lose them in the oncoming storm.
Gavin’s thoughts sounded another warning in Adan’s mind. “Look up ahead.”
Adan wheeled around to face the oncoming storm. He didn’t need to borrow Gavin’s eyes this time; the force ahead had already emerged from the swirling clouds.
This new contingent consisted of three groups of thirty or forty figures each, packed onto massive, elongated transports. The floating ships had slanted grills in the front and an open bay in the middle. These ungainly contraptions were in much worse condition than the small ships coming from behind. Their grime-covered fuselages looked pieced together from cast off machinery. They moved ponderously across the desert, as if doing so with great effort. Each had half a dozen guns mounted along the sides in haphazard fashion, shoved into odd orifices or soldered on precariously in unexpected positions. Though the weapons were quite large, they didn’t look anything like the deadly whisper cannons. The barrels of these weapons were blunt and much wider. Yellow lights ran in dotted lines along either side of the barrels, making them stand out amidst the dust clouds of the storm. Adan ran a quick check with his bioseine, but found nothing to tell him what sort of weapons they were.
Unlike the forces behind them, the figures on the decks of these new ships were dressed like Waymen, wearing faded khaki-colored garricks and kaffs. But they could not be desert warriors. Waymen never used any kind of technology whatsoever, in fact they were afraid of it. They had to be somatarchs in disguise.
Adan and Gavin were now pinned on either side. The o
nly question was which group they would have to face first. The one ahead of them had at least three times the number of warriors, but they were concentrated on only three ships and their vehicles looked to be far less maneuverable.
“We’ve got no chance against that force behind us,” Gavin explained, “They’re too fast and too spread out. We’ve got to try and get around that line of ballast cruisers and hope we don’t come into the range of their pulsers.”
Gavin didn’t bother going into any more detail before veering the lev to the left. Darting in and out of the taller mounds of scrap, he tried to pick the best path to get past the ships. But with so much salvage to avoid, they veered too close to one of the cruisers and it opened fire on them.
Beams of intense yellow light blazed across the desert, slicing through the scrap around them. Four or five rays swept over their heads, forcing Gavin to plunge the lev downwards so that it skipped across the sand. Though the lines of energy were constant, concentrated pulses zipped along the beams like tiny balls of light.
Adan and Gavin’s ship dove behind a box-like hulk of metal giving them temporary cover. Their concealment only lasted a moment. Beams sliced the giant piece of scrap into smaller chunks which tumbled to the sand.
No doubt the ship firing on them would have sliced the lev to pieces a moment later if Gavin hadn’t steered sharply back to the right. The turn was a blind one, swerving around a pile of wreckage. Gavin had no way of seeing the pile of machinery waiting for them on the other side. They came in too fast. Even the avoidance technology on the lev couldn’t stop them from colliding with the twisted metallic wreckage that rose up before them. Gavin veered hard to the left so that they avoided a direct hit, but they clipped the side of it. The lev flipped forward, launching Adan and Gavin skyward.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 39
