“Alright everybody, listen up,” Captain Kol said. “Vance and I have got business to do. As for the rest of you, I don’t mean to cast a pall on your little vacation, but you need to remember. We may not be in Alliance space anymore, which means they aren’t going to send a fleet or drop troops here. But that doesn’t mean we’re on easy street. They will eventually pick up our scent and they definitely have agents on this planet. So keep a low profile. Understood?”
Everyone acknowledged. “Good.”
Captain Kol nodded at Vance and the two strode away.
“Come on,” Jac said, waving. “Follow me.” Now that Ashla thought of it, Jac must have had one of those little earpieces on. Ashla heard his gurgly voice through her helmet speakers.
Ashla followed Jac and then made sure Dothin and Nix were coming along as well. Jac led them through a series of winding corridors that were half-and-half melding of the natural stone and technology. The floors were all metal decking and must have been powered as they featured small emergency LEDs. The ceiling was a web of wires, cables and pipes suspended by a continuous array of support struts. But the walls were stone. They were hewn and sanded down and inlaid with all kinds of iconography. Stylized Baragazi people—like Jac but with tails—walked beside big cow-sized reptiles and massive horned beasts. They were represented by sharp, straight lines and precise angles. Tiny pictograms flowed about the stiff figures, as if representing the air they breathed.
“Wow,” Ashla said without meaning to. She lifted her link and started taking pictures with it as she past.
“This is one of the oldest cities in our history,” Jac said. “It was a city long before it was a spaceport.”
People of various descriptions, mostly tailed Baragazi in what Ashla could only assume was traditional garb, walked here and there in the wide carven walkways. Here and there the halls would open up into forums. Some were open air while others were covered by skins held aloft by trestles of an unknown material. In many places the striking lightning-bolt figures ceased to make room for a doorway.
Ashla noticed how, as she followed Jac, the artwork changed. The bolt-straight lines gave way to curves and figures became organic and rounded and decorated with spirals. The symbols went from hard pictographs to a kind of proto-alphabetical runes to something more resembling modern text, though in a language and alphabet Ashla did not recognize. It was like she was seeing the Baragazi people grow before her, their art style and writing format unfolding and maturing as she went from hall to forum to hall.
The others were talking, discussing the things she was seeing. Dothin and Nix asked questions and Jac answered. Part of Ashla wanted to participate in the conversation but the rest of her, most of her, wanted to drink it all in, give the sights her full attention and discuss it later.
Jac halted and Ashla jerked to a stop before colliding with him.
They stood in another wide forum covered in a translucent pavilion. People came and went. In one corner a band of Baragazi played strange instruments. One slapped a pair of small drums with his bulbous fingertips. Another plucked at a long, thin-bowled stringed instrument. A third used a pair of tiny mallets to tap at a tinkling xylophone. No one played a flute or horn. Ashla wondered if the thinner air had caused the Baragazi to avoid wind instruments.
Jac stood before a pair of Baragazi men. He talked with them, but not in a language Ashla understood. When they replied, pointing and nodding, Ashla wished she had thought ahead and swapped the full-seal helmet with a simpler oxygen mask. She heard Jac’s words through their shared channel, but the other men’s voices were inaudible, heard more through the glass helmet than through the comm channel.
“Shyazi,” Jac said. “Nakhuru.” He pulled his link out and opened a banking application. One of the men, older, by the graying of his scales, put his hand over Jac’s, halting him.
“Nakhulei, qulaish wassan.”
Jac bowed his head. The other men did the same and then Jac looked back at Ashla and nodded. She followed him down another corridor and then through a doorway. The room she entered was all modern. A corner with racks of candy and snacks and refrigerators with cold drinks was sectioned off by transparent windows like a convenience store. Against another corner a smiling Baragazi woman stood behind a counter. Ashla noted a square-cut section of stone with the traditional artwork standing proudly in a heavy display case against one wall, obviously the section that was cut out to make this room. Bays of lift doors stood in an alcove to one side.
Signs here were in both the Alliance Common Alphabet and that strange text she’d seen evolving in the sculptures.
Jac led the group to the lifts and hit a call button. Then he pointed at an unusual kiosk against the far wall. The ACA text read “air compression/refilling station.” Ashla checked her link and was surprised to see she had gone through half her air supply already. She stepped over to the kiosk and refilled her bottle. Dothin and Nix did likewise.
“Let’s go,” Jac said. Ashla turned and saw him holding a lift door open. Ashla slung her air cannister back on and then rushed to the lift. They all piled into the lift cage and Jac tapped the button at the top of the console. The text she could read next to that button said “Observation.”
“This,” Jac said, “is the real show.”
Ashla didn’t hear the lift ding. The doors opened. Ashla stepped out onto the observation deck of a tower perhaps thirty meters tall. She jogged out to the edge, held the railing and then looked out.
Below her the surface of Gazi Sho was smooth and flat and extended in every direction as far as the eye could see, save for the occasional smattering of windblown rock formations. The earth was a yellow ochre color, seeming to match the complexion of Jac’s scaly face. Heat turned the land into a rippling ocean, interspersing ruddy oranges and paler lemon yellows. Every thirty meters or so a massive cylinder rose maybe fifty meters high, the top half of which consisted of spinning vertical wind turbines. Gazi Sho’s moons, three small disks of white, yellow and green hung in the sky. None of them were as big as Eltar’s moon.
Ashla turned to see Dothin guiding Nix to the edge slowly. Nix’s face had gone from embarrassed to nervous. His face had gone pale and his eyes darted this way and that, blinking furiously. Ashla walked back to them and took Nix’s hand. He walked like someone expecting his legs to give out at any time, taking careful, anxious steps.
Once Nix was at the edge Dothin guided his hand to the balustrade and then gave an encouraging squeeze to Nix’s clavicle. Ashla put Nix’s other hand on the balustrade but held the point of contact.
Nix looked over the edge, shuddered, and slowly raised his gaze. As his head rose his eyes widened first with panic and then with wonder.
“Wow,” he said. Ashla couldn’t help but giggle at his expression: half nausea, half awe. “It’s so...” his words slipped away as he looked up at the moons.
“It is,” Ashla said, squeezing his hand.
Nix let go of the balustrade with one hand and pointed into the distance. “Look!”
Ashla followed the imaginary line from his hand deep into the desert and its strange forest of wind turbines.
“What?” Dothin asked.
Ashla squinted. Could she see movement in the sands that wasn’t heat ripples? “What is that?” she asked. She pulled her link out, turned on the camera and then cranked up the zoom. The abnormal motion far in the distance became a line of people and animals, a caravan. Baragazi in more of that traditional garb of long robes and headdresses led animals Ashla recognized from the walls. Reptiles with bulbous bodies and large, clomping creatures thumped along as they all followed their route across the endless desert.
Ashla recorded it for a while, panning her link across the line. Then she stopped the recording and handed her link to Nix to view. He took it and looked.
“Wow,” he said. “Your link has really nice optics.”
Dothin laughed and shook his head.
Nix turned to him, sheepishly smili
ng, his face turning red in embarrassment. Then he looked through the link again.
“But what are they doing out there?” he asked.
“It’s a caravan,” Jac said. “There are thousands of tribal units out there and they travel about from place to place.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to fly?” Nix asked. “I don’t even see wheels.”
Ashla turned to look at Jac as he responded. He shrugged. “It is how the Baragazi have survived for ages, caravanning from water source to water source, and seeking out ilzagai nests for their coveted larval extracts. It is--”
Jac kept talking but Ashla was somewhere else. It was like a waking dream. In Jac’s place stood Cel and Lita. Lita was her usual serene self, but Cel’s otherwise brusque and prickly manner slipped and she looked into the desert with open awe and said, “It’s beautiful.”
“Ashla?” Nix said, squeezing her hand. Ashla blinked. Cel and Lita were gone and Jac was back. She looked at Nix and was surprised by the concerned look on his face. “Are you alright?”
Without thinking, Ashla lifted her fingers to brush tears from her eyes, then frowned when they hit the faceplate of her helmet. She sniffed.
“It’s not right,” she said, without really meaning to.
“What’s not?” Nix asked. Dothin’s expression was knowing, like he understood.
“I have to go back,” Ashla said, letting go of the banister. She turned.
“Wait,” Nix said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t understand.”
Ashla ignored Nix. She couldn’t pay too much attention to him, or she’d lose her resolve. Instead she addressed Jac.
“Jac, if you don’t mind, I’m going to wait down in that lobby for when you all are done. That’ll be okay, right?”
Jac’s eyes were sad and his nictitating membranes closed and opened in quick succession.
“Of course,” he said. “No one will bother you.”
“We won’t be long,” Dothin said.
“Take your time.”
Ashla turned to the lifts, tapped the button and entered the first car that opened. Only when it closed and she knew she was alone did she allow herself to collapse into a corner and cry herself hoarse.
Chapter Forty-Five:
Let us Make a Covenant
Salazar hated Gazi Sho. It was all one color: an annoying orangey yellow which, if he had to pick from a thousand different varieties, would be his least favorite. Furthermore, it was hot, but not hot enough. If the atmosphere had been significantly hotter, or had some other problematic quality to it, it would have warranted wearing sealed gear. But even the equipment he had, the helmet and air cannister, was overkill. A simple oxygen mask would be enough to overcome the thin air. But because it wasn’t hot enough to warrant a space suit, or a powered smartskin, he would have looked like a wierdo wearing either.
At his position in life, he reckoned he shouldn’t care about what people thought concerning his apparel. But he did, when he left the Jessamine to walk the winding corridors of the ancient canyon city, he sweated and hated the planet all the more.
Luckily, he needn’t leave the ship often. Once to meet the fixer, once to order the supplies they needed to finish repairs on the Jessamine, and once to do the final checks on said repairs.
His link was sending audible directions to the speakers in his helmet. Salazar hadn’t been to Zishunai more than half a dozen times, but even if he’d been there a thousand times he still would get lost without some kind of automated directions. The city was a maze. The excuse recorded in the history books was it allowed its inhabitants a level of defensive capability when enemy tribes attacked but Sal figured that was a lie.
His link told him to enter the building to the right and Salazar took its word for it. Could you call them buildings if they were all mined out caves? It didn’t matter. Salazar stepped into a cool, dim room he took to be Zishunai’s version of a low-rent flophouse lobby. The room spilled into a few corridors in different directions. There were some uncomfortable-looking couches in one corner, surrounding a table. Baragazi lounged on the couches, smoking something through long tubes protruding from a large, shiny smoke-pot. The air around them billowed with green smoke.
Salazar led Vance to the lift bays and tapped the button to go down. He turned towards the kid and realized he was wearing his vision-augmenting shades inside his helmet. Salazar shook his head.
“What?” Vance asked shrugging.
“You look ridiculous with those things on,” Sal said.
The kid smiled. “You mean ridiculously good.”
Salazar shook his head again and smiled, entering the lift cage that opened before him. “I meant exactly what I said.”
Sal, still taking directions from his link, though without the audio, tapped the button for a floor seven stories below him.
“Wow,” Vance said as the doors closed. “This guy is deep.”
Salazar didn’t respond. He waited as the cage descended deeper into the earth.
“Have you worked with this guy before?” Vance asked.
Salazar shook his head. “Nope. He comes highly recommended though, and he’s expensive. I’ve never been in this deep with the Alliance before, though. Hopefully he’s up to the challenge.”
Vance put a hand on Salazar’s shoulder. “And if not, maybe you can retire here.”
Salazar let out a single breath of laughter. The fact was the kid wasn’t too far off base. If Salazar’s contact couldn’t square him with the Alliance, his options for further business were few. Sure, the galaxy was a big place and the CAS only had influence in an eighth of its systems. But that’s where Salazar had been doing business for the last few decades. All of his business partners and contacts were in Alliance space. He could start fresh out in the Pelean Verge or the Spuro Siliac, but he would be starting from square one. He’d have to develop a whole new reputation, a whole new network of contacts. He’d probably have to find a new crew too, as most of his people would prefer to find work in the places they were used to. He didn’t want to consider himself old, but he felt he was too old to start fresh.
He stopped in the middle of a square hallway studded with doors. The distance between doors told him the apartments here were small. The numbers on the doors told him he had gone too far.
He shook his head, turned and doubled back.
“You okay, cap?”
“Yeah,” Sal said, searching through the numbers until he found the one he was looking for. “Here.”
If they were in one of the nicer hotels that catered to outworlders, they wouldn’t need to keep wearing their oxygen gear. The interiors would all be pressurized to a standard concentration of breathable air. This place was for locals.
Sal poked at the doorbell, but before his finger could touch the button the door slid open and a beady-eyed Baragazi grabbed Sal’s hand and pulled him in, frantically waving for Vance to follow.
“You’re Kol, eh?” the man said, then, “Course you are, course you are. Come in. Hurry.” Salazar opened his mouth, but the man stopped him. “No talking. Not yet. Shut the door. Stay quiet. Don’t move. Maybe...maybe don’t breathe.”
Salazar had been correct in his estimation of the size of the apartments. This one was tiny, maybe larger than a passenger cabin on the Jessamine, and everything was designed to fold away or have multiple uses. The major difference was that here you didn’t have to fold up the bed to use the desk.
The frantic Baragazi man rushed to a chair, dropped in it and rolled to the desk in the corner. Multiple screens of various sizes hung over the desk’s main interface surface on mechanical arms. The man started tapping on them, often with one hand working a keyboard on the desk surface while another was interacting with a network of nodes or dealing with a virtual control board on one of the others. Four virtual sliders lit up on one of the smaller screens. The Baragazi slid them to the top at the same time with the fingers of his left hand and in the same motion, counted down a finger at a time
. He ended with his fist pumping down and Sal expected an explosion, as that’s what followed a finger countdown to fist pump motion in the war vids. Instead, Salazar felt something in his teeth like a high-pitched squeal his ears couldn’t pick up. The sensation faded away.
“So,” the Baragazi man said, steepling his hands and tapping his fingers together. “What can the almighty Zed do for you?”
“Greetings Zed—” Sal said but the Baragazi lifted his hand.
“Tut, tut, tut,” he said, gesticulating each word. “Almighty Zed.”
“Greetings, Almighty Zed,” Salazar said. As he spoke, fear spilled acid into his guts. Was this guy serious? Sal had heard many geniuses were eccentric, he’d met a few that were downright mad, but this guy seemed extreme.
“Greetings, Captain, and...plus one.”
Vance started to introduce himself, but Zed turned again.
“So,” he said, tapping away at his many screens again, “I hear you’re in a bit of trouble with the Alliance. Tough situation, for people who want to fly in Alliance space that is. And problematic to do outside Alliance Space, where I’ll have to consider co-axial anti-form communication protocols before I can even begin to tinker with their code.”
There were no other chairs in the room, so Salazar remained standing in the dingy apartment. The only thing new or well-tended in the place was Zed’s computer cores, held in a rectangular chamber covered in blinking lights, and his chair which was one of those sleek, comfortable looking chairs advertised to people who spent long hours sitting down.
“Does that mean you won’t—” Vance started.
Zed cut him off again, this time turning to look at him while still tapping and swiping at his screens. His beady eyes peered out of a dark-green face covered in tiny, shiny scales. His nictitating membranes flicked closed once, and then back open in the same instant. Salazar had seen Jac blink with the black membranes himself and he figured it was some kind of emotional tell, but one he couldn’t read.
“You dare doubt the Almighty Zed?” Zed asked, turning back to his screens. “Perhaps I should punish him for that, eh?” Sal had no idea who he was talking to now. “Yes. Empty his personal accounts? Boring. Wreck his credit options. Basic. Put him on the Alliance’s most wanted list? Hmm, maybe.”
Remnant Page 46
