Nickie shrugged. “I love my aunt, okay? She was the only one who didn’t treat me like something to be fixed. Everyone else, especially my grandfather—they wanted me to change and be more like them.”
John grimaced. “I get that pressure. Everyone wants me to prove I’m as capable as my father. Did you ever feel like just—”
“Running away?” she finished. She made a flourish with her hands. “Welcome to my hideaway.”
John chuckled. “You know, we’re not that different.”
Nickie raised an eyebrow. “Really? I wouldn’t agree, Prince Preppy.”
“Really,” he insisted. “Your assessment of me would have been pretty close to the mark a couple of years ago.”
“So it’s not Prince Preppy, it’s Prince Playboy?”
John groaned. “How many of those names have you got for me?”
Nickie smirked. “An endless supply. You were telling me about your dubious past.”
He shook his head with a grin. “Actually, you were telling me about yours. You were all set on painting the galaxy red. What made you change track?”
Nickie shrugged. “I got in a hell of a bar fight. I was injured pretty badly, and my abilities were activated. It left me with a choice, and I chose to get my shit together and help people. When I came across the colony and found out they were about to be sold as slaves by the Skaines, I helped. And I’ve more or less been there until now when you showed up.”
“Hey, at least you’re not bored.”
That cracked Nickie up. “You got that right. This kind of action is more satisfying than anything I started in the whole five years before. Sure as hell beats starting brawls in bars just to break up the day. It has purpose or something.”
John frowned in amusement. “You went around starting fights in bars?”
Nickie smirked. “Well, yeah. What else do you do for a good time and an easy fight?” She collected her breakfast things and got up to clear them away. “Are you done? We’ve got a mission to plan.”
John drained the last of his coffee. “Yeah, sure. So, um… Does this mean we’re going to stop sniping at each other? And by ‘we,’ I mean you sniping at me.”
Nickie laughed. “I dunno, maybe? I can’t promise anything if you’re going to annoy me all the time.”
John put his hand over his heart and made a half-bow. “Then I shall endeavor not to annoy you too much.”
Nickie shook her head and walked off. “Well endeavor harder. You’re not quite hitting it yet.”
John threw up his hands and hurried to catch up with her. “I can’t win with you.” They walked along in silence for a few minutes. “Joking aside, thank you for agreeing to help.”
Nickie grew uncomfortable. “Don’t mention it.” John opened his mouth to protest, but she held up a hand and picked up her pace. “Seriously, don’t.”
John scrutinized her for a long moment. “Okay, I won’t. Hey, do you want to train together? I saw you had a setup in the cargo bay.”
Nickie narrowed her eyes. “Don’t push it. It’s not too late to space your ass.”
Rebus Quadrant, Planet Zuifra, Aboard the Penitent Granddaughter, Bridge
Meredith had concealed the Granddaughter in a close orbit on the dark side of one of the system’s larger moons. They had waited for the necessary alignment between the moon and the planet for Meredith to locate the area around the volcano and scan it, and she had rendered the data into a workable model of the area.
Nickie and John pored over the resulting imagery while he talked her through what to expect once they got there.
He pointed out a break in the jungle canopy. “We should leave the ship by the edge of the jungle and hike in from here.”
Nickie assessed the topography and shook her head. “That’s like forty-five klicks away, and over rough terrain. I can handle that, no worries, but I’m not sure anyone else can, apart from Grim.” She indicated a place near a wide river that was half the distance and on a more forgiving plane. “What about here, and then we can travel the river instead of feeding the mosquitos while we trek through the jungle?”
“There are no mosquitos here,” John told her. “What we face are bigger and angrier.”
Nickie smirked. “Of course we do. So, we go in here and up the river, and if that doesn’t work out, we can just hike the twenty klicks to the volcano. Then we get through your labyrinth and get the plant. No sweat.” She saw a slight shimmer in the air above the volcano. “Is it active?”
John zoomed in on the caldera. “Yes. That’s why we should leave the ship out of harm’s way—so Meredith can fly in if it erupts.”
Nickie looked at the sleeping death trap. “Meredith, how often does the volcano erupt?”
“One moment,” Meredith replied. “Around once every decade, according to local records. There was an instance of two eruptions within a couple of years of each other around eighty years ago.”
Nickie didn’t like the look of the volcano at all. She glanced at the rising heat above the ragged basin and turned back to John. “How long since the last eruption?”
John shrugged. “Ten years ago, give or take.”
“Why am I not surprised? Just our luck. Meredith, can we get imaging of the inside the volcano?”
“Unfortunately not,” Meredith replied. “With Federation technology, yes. This ship is rather lacking in that department, however.”
John headed for the door. “I need a few things from my quarters.” He returned a few minutes later with a small crate, which he set down by Nickie’s chair. “This should help,” he told her as he retrieved a handheld device from his pocket and plugged it into the console.
“What is it?” Nickie asked.
“My treasure map. Meredith, would you open the file X Marks the Spot, please?”
“Certainly, Your Highness,” Meredith replied.
Nickie blew a mental raspberry at Meredith. Suck-up.
The previous image was replaced with a heavily annotated three-dimensional representation of the interior of the volcano.
“Thank you, Meredith.” John swiped the image to hide his notes and zoomed in on a craggy opening in the base of the rock. “This is the main entrance.”
“The main entrance? That makes it sound like a place people visit.”
John nodded. “It’s a spiritual site for some. It’s where our warriors are forged; they go there to be tested and prove their worth. Just the outer chambers of the labyrinth, of course. Any deeper and they tend not to come back…as we’ve said.”
Nickie raised an eyebrow. “That sounds… Um, how exactly do they do that?”
“I’m not exactly sure about that part,” he admitted. “I do know there are a series of tests, like I said, and they’re specific to the warrior. All my research indicated that I’d find out when I got there.”
She flopped into her chair and put one boot on the console. “That’s not much to go on. What do you know?”
He swiped at the map again and the view of the outside blurred and refocused into what looked a lot like the inside of an ant nest to Nickie.
“Shit, when you said it was a labyrinth, I expected a labyrinth, but that’s a fucking labyrinth.” The tunnels began to branch almost as soon as the entrance opened up into the cave beyond, and pretty soon after that, the layout lost any semblance of logic. The tunnels twisted and turned, converged, and looped around and inexorably down until they all ended abruptly in a cavern deep underground. “Where’s our objective? And how the shiny fuck are we supposed to find our way through that?”
John grinned. “That’s where my research comes in.” He tapped his device, and a layer of scribbles was superimposed over the maze. “This is just the first section. It’s all the recorded routes taken by scholars and failed questers. I spent some time talking with a professor who claimed to have made it this far.” He pointed at the cutoff point. “I have no idea what comes after this, but the inner chambers lie somewhere beyond here.”
&nb
sp; “There’s no information?”
John shook his head. “No. No one who made it past this point has ever returned to tell the tale. I can only assume that they didn’t survive the tests.”
Nickie frowned in thought. “Who set these tests up in the first place?”
John held up his hands and shrugged. “It’s all lost to legend. Nobody knows for sure since no one has ever come back, remember?”
Nickie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “So we have no idea what we’re actually walking into?”
“Nope. All on faith.” John left his handheld on the console and went over to kneel by the crate he’d brought. “Well, faith, and some pretty cool tech.”
Nickie snorted. “I sure hope your tech’s awesome. Faith isn’t going to get us very far in that heat.”
John opened the crate. “I’ve got that covered. Actually, it was while I was on the trading outpost picking these up that the Briar Rose intercepted the message to you.” He pulled out a shiny hooded coverall and held it up to show her.
Nickie’s voice held faint alarm. “Were you planning on going disco-dancing afterward or something?”
John frowned, then chuckled when he saw the sideways look she was giving the silvered fabric. “Oh, no. They’re cutting-edge heat-resistant suits. I had extra made anyway since I was already looking for help, so everyone may as well use them. This one can be made to fit a Yollin, maybe.”
Nickie nodded. “Good idea. Is there anything else you think I should know before we get going?”
John thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Nickie got up from her chair. “Then we’re good to get started. Meredith, call the others to the bridge. We should get the briefing underway.”
Chapter 15 Nickie
Rebus Quadrant, Planet Zuifra, Reinek
Durq, glad to be remaining on board, waved to the group from the top of the ramp. “Be careful!” he called in a trembling voice. “We’ll be here if you need us.”
Nickie adjusted the considerable weight of her pack and then set off toward the tree line with Grim by her side. John followed, with Adelaide and Keen taking the rear to keep their eyes on the group.
They watched as the Granddaughter took off to wait in the lower atmosphere in case the group needed a rapid pickup and then marched into the jungle single-file.
Nickie spat the sand out of her mouth. “What’s with the climate here? That’s a jungle, I’m breathing sand, and it’s hot as all fuck.”
Adelaide looked around with wide eyes. “The wind, it’s so hot! It feels almost alive.”
Keen offered an explanation. “It must be the volcanic system here. Most of the planet looked sandy from those schematics, but the volcanoes enrich the soil and make the abundance of life here possible. Of course, whatever lives or grows here has to be tough. When the volcano erupts, it wipes out everything in its blast radius.”
“Speaking of things that live here, keep your eyes peeled,” Nickie quipped as she and Grim broke a path through the thick foliage with the machetes they’d brought for the purpose. “John tells me there are giant mosquitos here.”
“I wasn’t joking about those,” John called from behind her.
Nickie laughed. “How far are we from the river?”
“About three klicks,” John replied. “We keep on in this direction, and then we have easy sailing all the way to the volcano.”
“As long as we don’t fall victim to the mosquitos,” Grim chipped in.
John chuckled. “Yeah, that.”
They made good time through the jungle and heard the water a good twenty minutes before they came to the source. They stopped for a brief rest and a quick drink before continuing on to the looming volcano in the near distance.
Nickie’s enhanced eyesight gave her a clearer view of what awaited them. The peak was obscured by a low-hanging cloudbank that descended to meet the spray that rose from a drop in the river as it coursed around the base of the volcano.
Nickie looked down the steep incline to the rushing waters below. “I’d love to know your idea of choppy waters if this is your ‘easy sailing.’”
John sucked in a breath. “I’ve never actually been here. All I had was second-hand stories to go on. This isn’t what I was expecting, either.”
Nickie shrugged unconcernedly. “At least there’s something like a drop pool at the bottom of the volcano. We should be okay.”
The others came to stand beside her.
Adelaide’s face drained of color as she contemplated the river. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea. It didn’t look this fast on the map.” She looked at the inflatable raft they’d brought along for the journey. “Is the raft even going to be able to handle that?”
Keen patted her on the shoulder and grabbed the rope to pull the raft toward the water’s edge. “There’s only one way to find out.”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Maybe I should have stayed on the ship with Durq. This is a lot more dangerous than I thought it was going to be.”
Grim came to stand beside her. “Can I tell you a secret?”
Adelaide nodded distractedly. “Of course.”
Grim dropped his voice. “I’m afraid of heights. Terrified, in fact.”
Adelaide frowned. “But there are definitely going to be heights involved here. Why did you come then?”
Grim gazed at the volcano with a far-off expression. “Because it’s a challenge. Because it’s there, and a man’s life will be saved if this mission is successful.”
“Not to mention the war that won’t happen,” John added.
Nickie noticed that Keen was having trouble, so she took the rope from him and dragged the raft to the water. “If we could all get our asses into the raft before the volcano erupts and burns us all to cinders, that would be fantastic.”
They all piled in and pushed off with their oars. The current took the raft immediately. They were propelled along at high speed, only just able to keep the raft upright in the churning rapids.
Nickie whooped as she pushed her oar against a rock to avoid the raft hitting it. “This is a hell of a lot faster than walking!”
Grim leaned out a little to steer them around a cluster of floating logs. “How long until we hit the pool?”
How long, Meredith?
Approximately six minutes. But Nickie—
Hang on, Meredith, there’s something ahead.
That’s what I was about to tell you. The pool is at the bottom of a thirty-foot waterfall.
“Tie yourselves off!” she yelled. “Quickly. There’s a drop coming.”
They all hustled to secure themselves to the raft. The spray from the river got thicker the closer they got to the edge of the waterfall, obscuring their view. It was a tense minute or two as the questers waited for the fall.
They hit a log, or a log hit them, and the raft was suddenly unsupported in the air. Adrenaline stretched the second before it plummeted into an eternity for Nickie. She saw the individual reactions of everyone on the raft. Grim’s face was set in resigned determination, John’s and Keen’s held an equal amount of joy, which she suspected was mirrored on her own, Adelaide’s eyes were screwed shut as she clung to the side of the raft with everything she had.
The impact with the water threw them all to the ends of their tethers. Grim’s snapped, but he was an adept swimmer and trod water while he checked to see if any of the others needed help.
Only Adelaide remained on the raft. Nickie checked on her first, then swam back and hauled herself in. The others climbed back in, and they paddled to the edge of the pool.
They clambered onto the sandy shore and shook off what water they could before heading in single file once more toward the base of the volcano.
Rebus Quadrant, Planet Zuifra, Reinek, Base of Volcano
Keen fell toward the back of the group as the air became thinner. They’d climbed the lower slopes of the volcano with ease, and the ledge halfway up th
at John had insisted they aim for was within sight.
As they neared the end of their climb, John strode ahead. “We’ll find the plant growing somewhere in the center chambers, where the soil is rich enough in sulfur for it to grow. All we have to do is get there in one piece.”
Nickie hauled herself over the ledge and turned to help Adelaide scramble over. “We made it to the tunnel entrance,” she called over the edge.
Adelaide unhooked the rope that attached her to Nickie and went to peer nervously into the dark entrance. “This isn’t the entrance we looked at on the map.”
John made it to the ledge and knelt to help Grim. “There’s a verified route from this entrance. It’s the safer choice.”
Keen puffed as he reached the edge and accepted Grim’s and John’s help to gain the ledge. “Is it supposed to be this hot?” He checked his suit readout and gasped. “That’s pretty damn high!” There was a low, deep rumble beneath their feet, and an explosion of beating wings came from the trees below as the birds took flight in fear. “Is it safe? I can’t see these suits protecting us from much more than the temperature.”
John pulled the hood of his suit up and locked the flexible faceplate in place. “It’s a volcano, Keen. What do you think?” He strode into the tunnel entrance with more than a little swagger in his step.
Nickie wrinkled her nose at the smell of sulfur that hung in the air. “It’s definitely not going to be safe if we waste time talking,” she remarked, pulling her own hood up. She switched on her flashlight and headed into the tunnel after John. “Just be careful, and you won’t get hurt.”
The dank tunnel ahead was lit only by John’s handheld device. Nickie hurried to catch up with him as the others followed with varying amounts of reluctance.
John led them through the labyrinth, ever down toward the center of the volcano. The tunnels were rough and almost impassable in some places. They picked their way through, carefully navigating the frequent rockfalls they came across while they followed the uncertain directions John had compiled.
Labyrinth (Deuces Wild Book 3) Page 15
