“How’d you figure that, Mister Leonard?” Zimi asked him, leaning close and peering at his pad.
“I um, well, looked perhaps in some places that are otherwise secure. Like the Governor’s perimeter security feeds and personal location tracking.” The majority of the words tumbled out of his mouth and over one another in a jumble as he shifted around anxiously, and Sirrah had to suppress a smile despite the severity of the circumstances.
“Wow, that’s really amazing, Mister Leonard!” Zimi didn’t sound as shocked as Sirrah might have suspected she would.
“Damn, you’ve got some serious skills, Mr. Leonard. Good job!” Merlo said it exuberantly and loudly, accompanying the statement with a couple of loud, slow claps.
“Indeed, it is good to know. Thank you, Mr. Leonard.” Branwen’s face was still heavily grounded in the seriousness of the matter, though she nodded at him appreciatively. “Keep at it.”
“If I, um, find anything more, I’ll of course relay it immediately.” Mr. Leonard smiled appreciatively, but he also ducked his head and appeared rather embarrassed, though he didn’t blush as much as Sirrah would have expected.
“So what did you think of that Stone guy, Captain?” Merlo asked. “I mean, I didn’t like him much, overall. Kind of like what Governor Medlava said, something about him rubs me the wrong way, but I can’t put a finger on it.”
“Oh, I mostly agree.” Branwen nodded her approval to Merlo’s statement. “I neither trust him nor like him. But, we do ourselves a disservice if we assume him to be complicit without first investigating all of our leads. In this, breadth of information is still key.” The Captain tilted her head as if considering something. “As an aside, what color were his eyes to you, Merlo?
“What?” Merlo shrugged. “I dunno. Brown, I guess. Why?”
“There was the oddest coloration to them. Though I suppose it could well have been the lighting, or coloration that only showed in my visual spectrum. Just curious, really; I have never seen the like before. But I suppose it matters little for our current purpose.”
Despite herself, Sirrah slowly faded out of the conversation, losing the ability to continue focusing on their banter. As much as she wanted to leap to a conclusion, to any conclusion that would lead her to Tiala, she knew that Branwen was right. She just struggled with the justifiable worry that the longer they took, the less chance there was that she would ever see her beloved mentor again. In that, Jori Stone’s words, relayed by Branwen, haunted her.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Loud Sounds
Merlo
Merlo shot straight up in bed at the roar, the deafening sound of impact that shook the walls of the Destiny around her. She promptly fell out of bed—Prisoner 286 had been hogging most of it anyway—and rolled to her feet in the dim, calling for the lights as she did so. Another impact shook the Destiny before ambient lighting unveiled her quarters, though it felt strange, not like an external, collision-based impact at all.
A ripple of force rolled through her room, blurring her eyes and forcing her to blink, while her mind raced, wondering what errors she might have made in plotting the ship’s orbit. But when her vision cleared, instead of rushing to the bridge, she paused. Prisoner 286 sat bolt upright, seething in warped light, grasping at the side of her head and staring around with an unfocused, enraged expression on her face.
Merlo glanced up, at the dents in the metal deck plating above her bed, and her eyes widened. But before she could open her mouth to utter more than a quiet, reassuring remark, the com system in her room chimed into activity.
“Miss Merlo, is everything alright? Do you need assistance? The ship’s internal—”
286’s eyes darted around, looking for the source of the voice, passing over Merlo initially as if she weren’t even there, dark energy seething entropically around her. “Hold on a sec,” she called out, interrupting. She felt the need to silence Mr. Leonard and try to control the situation, whatever it was, but her sudden exclamation drew the Prisoner’s attention squarely onto her. Hazel eyes, distant and irate, landed on her with a force of will that almost made her flinch. “286? Hey, you okay?”
For a moment, Merlo was absolutely certain that Prisoner 286 had no idea whatsoever who she was. “Hey, Six. It’s me, Merlo. You okay?” The dark energy thickened around the obviously furious woman, small items all over the room lifting into the air along with the trailing ends of Merlo’s silver-blue hair. But then 286 blinked, shaking her head and gripping her hair along one side. When the Prisoner finally looked back up, Merlo could see in her eyes that she was herself again, albeit now covered in sweat, veins in her corded arms and along her temples standing out starkly. All the small objects settled themselves back down with a minor clatter, and Merlo’s hair returned to its usual state of not-floating.
“Hey, Mr. Leonard.” Merlo still didn’t feel that it would be a good idea to make any sudden movement toward the bed, at least not yet, but she should make sure the rest of the crew didn’t come rushing in here to try and save her or something.
“Um, yes, Miss Merlo?”
“It’s all good. I’ll call you back later, okay?”
286 had her eyes squeezed shut, still rubbing at the side of her head. She grabbed Merlo’s light sheet and used it to mop the sweat off of her face and torso, and Merlo couldn’t help but admire the tone of her body, the way she moved, and even the light scarring criss-crossing the edges of her figure.
“If you’re sure, Miss Merlo. I’m here if you need me, okay?” Mr. Leonard finally replied, sounding dubious and not reassured at all.
“I’m sure.” She paused a moment, waiting for the vague electronic chime that heralded the disconnection of her room’s com channel. “So, hey. You okay?”
286 looked up at her and smiled a crooked, slightly wan smile. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” 286’s voice came out low and rough. Merlo felt better now about sliding back onto the bed with the woman, and 286 slid forward slightly as well. They ended up sitting side by side, both still completely naked, legs hanging off of her short, compact bed which rested in an alcove in the wall.
Merlo stared up indicatively, trying to draw the Prisoner’s attention. “You dented my roof, and kinda yelled so loud that I fell out of the bed.”
Prisoner 286 tilted her head back as well, staring up alongside her. “Huh. You sure that was me?” Merlo fixed her with a flat stare and thumped her on the arm. “Ow. Dammit, Merlo.” She rubbed her arm lightly.
“What was it, some kind of… nightmare?” She tread carefully, cautious with the subject. She didn’t want to push 286 to answer, but she was brimming with curiosity, as well as concern.
“I dunno. I was kind of asleep.”
It was hard to read her when she was flippant like this, but the tempered iron of her composure didn’t seem as settled as it typically did. “You want to talk about it?”
“Nah.”
“You got a headache?” Merlo noted she was still favoring her head, especially on the side her colored deathhawk had collapsed over.
“Yeah.”
“Dim lights,” Merlo called out, getting the ambient light lowered down to a dimmer level. 286 looked over at her after a moment of silence.
“Thanks, Merlo.”
“You, um, want something to drink?”
286 grinned at her, suddenly seeming mostly back to her normal, moderately obnoxious self. “Sure, go get me some damn juice and a sandwich or something.”
She grunted, amused. “No, dumbass. I mean something to drink.” Merlo made the mug-lifting gesture that Branwen usually mimed when indicating the consumption of alcohol, only belatedly realizing it was probably a gesture particular to Fade alone.
286 seemed to get the gist of her message anyway. “Nah, Merlo. Can’t.”
Merlo snorted. “I’m the one that has to fly the ship tomorrow you know, not you. You probably won’t even get to go down to the planet. I think you’re safe to have a few drinks, as long as you don’t make me drink them all,
too.”
Prisoner 286 shook her head, knitting her fingers together and popping her knuckles in a vulgar cascade of loud cracks and pops. “Don’t remind me. And no, I mean I can’t.”
Merlo furrowed her brow in confusion. “What? What do you mean? Does that collar not let you do stuff like that, or something?” It would make a sort of sense, she supposed; a drunk 286 could probably do a lot of damage, after all.
“No, Merlo.” 286 sighed loudly in frustration, the way Merlo had come to understand indicated that she felt someone was being stupid. “I actually can’t. Well, not literally. I could pour it into my face and swallow, but it’s a really bad idea.”
“Oh.” She sat with her in the dim, then shifted to lean against the taller woman. “Why?” She asked quietly.
Her companion on the bed sighed again, louder, feigning further annoyance. “Geeze, you’re not gonna let this go, huh, Merlo?” She snorted. “Has to do with the chemical balance of my brain, which has to do with the massive amount of dark matter nodules built up in my awesome nervous system.” She pointed at her own head. “Alcohol, in particular, fucks that balance up, and leaves me in severe pain once it gets its toxicity into my system.”
“Oh. Shit.” Merlo smirked at the other woman. “So a Hel of a hangover, huh?”
She got a crooked grin in return. “Something like that.”
Merlo let the silence linger another good minute or so. “So, 286, can I ask you something else?”
“I guess.” 286 glanced at her, seeming to finally notice where Merlo was leaning her weight against her. “Sure, why not?”
“When I read the Altairans’ file on you, it talked about… how they thought you were some sort of experiment. I mean, that you’d possibly been experimented on when you were younger, to help make you so powerful, or to see what made you that way, or something.”
Prisoner 286 fixed her with a flat stare and a raised eyebrow, before snorting with visible amusement. “Yeah, sure Merlo. I’m some sort of laboratory experiment, a super powerful Kinetic bioweapon developed as a secret weapon of the Urzran government.” She wiggled her fingers at Merlo. “Sounds like conspiracy shit to me.” She tossed her hair back, looking contemptuous.
“They had some pretty good logic going for it in your files.”
286 shook her head, then raked the rest of her sweaty, purple-dyed hair back out of her face, looking somewhere between amused and disgusted. “Yeah, well, I could slap together some ‘logic’ about how I’m the daughter of the long lost queen of Sentinel, but it doesn't make it true.” She fixed Merlo with an unreadable expression. “Don’t believe everything you read, Merlo. You can find proof for anything if you want to bad enough.” Then 286 cocked her head curiously and the unreadable expression faded away. “So, how about that food?”
That was the sign that question time was over, Merlo figured. She smiled to herself, though; she was happy that 286 had confided in her at all. “Sure, Six. Be right back.”
Prisoner 286 snorted again. “Six, huh?” She directed a raised eyebrow at Merlo as the girl stood and snap-generated her suit.
“Yeah. That whole two-eight-six thing was getting to be a mouthful. You needed a nickname.”
She seemed to consider for a moment, and it took Merlo a moment to realize that she was over-acting it. “Well, I like you, so I guess I’ll let you keep it.” She smirked. “Just don’t spend it all in one place.”
Merlo shook her head, smiling and mouthing “what does that even mean” to herself as she left the room in search of food. She even remembered to hit the com and explain everything to a worried Mr. Leonard on her way.
15.1- Branwen
Odesa wasn’t like Kharvid, and Branwen found herself somewhat disappointed by that fact. She’d begun to visualize all Urzran cities as these grand underground complexes, entire ecosystems chained together and forming a civilization beneath the planet’s hot crust.
Sure, some of Odesa was supposedly underground, but a lot of it appeared to be above the earth as well. Blocky, utilitarian structures of shaped and poured stone rose in uneven chunks from the baked ground. The buildings were thick-looking and sturdy, with almost no windows to speak of, all probably necessary adaptations in architecture to defend against the oppressive heat and solar radiation.
Merlo had flown them from Kharvid into a low orbit, setting them on a trajectory to be where they needed to be by the time they all got some well deserved rest. Yesterday had been a long day, after all, and Branwen could only hope that they were now closer to their goal than when they’d started. Instinct told her that Stone’s last words to her were right, threat or no, and Kala Tiala’s time was swiftly running out.
“There’s the port.” Merlo’s voice shook Branwen from her thoughts. They were on the bridge, Merlo having just dropped them from orbit into Odesa for the final leg of their search. The city flew by below them, tall dark obelisks of buildings passing underneath, topped with tall metal rods that Branwen supposed were for reception and data transfer. Handfuls of transports with darkened windows zipped by on the gridwork of streets below, but from their vantage point high in the sky, the city seemed eerie and deserted.
“Looks somewhat oppressive, more like a graveyard than a city. I would not want to live here,” Branwen commented. And a vast graveyard at that, even though Odesa was only a moderately sized city by comparison to Kharvid, or to many places on Altair or The Bazaar. Or even some of the main cities on Koltan.
“Yeah, I’ll pass on Urzra altogether, Captain.” The pilot grinned, but kept her eyes on the screen ahead as they threaded between the grasp of giant, stony fingers. “But I agree, this place is even worse than the last one.”
Docking at Odesa was relatively similar to the process at Kharvid. A large building loomed ahead, with slots cut from rock ready to receive starships of various sizes and shapes. Merlo parked them in one likely typically reserved for the largest of cargo vessels, and metal clamps with magnetic arms latched onto the Destiny almost before she could extend her mechanical landing legs.
It didn’t take the crew long to ready themselves for the excursion; she and Merlo were the only ones disembarking right now, anyway. The long trip down the elevator was also much like the ones endured on Kharvid, though more time consuming and thankfully less crowded. Branwen noted Merlo shifting and crossing her arms, a posture that spoke of hidden discomfort. Branwen threw a friendly arm around her short pilot in the spirit of reassurance and companionship, and the girl smiled up at her after a moment of initial surprise. She grinned down at Merlo in return, and they waited out the interminable descent together in a more amicable silence.
Branwen blinked, suddenly startled as strips of the stone walls around them abruptly disappeared, replaced by thick glasteel variants that allowed a view. Only now did the pair of travelers see the real Odesa, stretching twice as far beneath the ground as it did above. For each building standing on the surface above their heads, a mirror image of it in stone and steel descended deep beneath the earth, like technological, urban taproots. Many stretched downward until they anchored into the cavern floor, their length striped with those slashes of glasteel windows and trimmed in neon lighting.
The cavern that housed the beating heart of Odesa, Branwen noted, did not seem to be a naturally occurring one like had been the case with Kharvid. Instead of organic, rounded shapes, the cavern’s edges and corners were squared off and machined, showing clear signs of Urzran expansion over time. It all seemed very modern, very cosmopolitan, at least to Branwen. Lights were brightly colored, and far beneath their feet, a mass of foot traffic bustled about, going to and fro from small buildings that clustered around the feet of the gigantic… skyscrapers? Groundscrapers?
The slow descent of their elevator still took a while to hit the cavern floor. Branwen noticed several smaller, much more modern elevators practically firing their passengers upward at many times her current speed, and wondered briefly if they should have gotten one of those instead, and i
f it would really have been preferable to her.
They passed several networks of thick crosswalks connecting the buildings during their controlled fall, most of them also thick with pedestrians, though their elevator stopped at none of them. Studying the layout of Odesa, Branwen came to the realization that, in the reverse of most cities, in Odesa the poor lived high above the surface and the wealthy far below it, enjoying both comfort and miles of protection from the deadly solar radiation.
Their elevator chimed, and a disembodied VI told everyone in a straightforward, gruff tone where they were and that they should now disembark. The handful of Urzran passengers were already at the door before it finished speaking, jockeying for position and shouldering their way out, if not quite outright shoving one another. Branwen, and by extension Merlo, waited for them to squeeze out, then departed as well.
The trip to Oran Yustari’s location wasn’t particularly enjoyable for Branwen. As much as she found herself surprisingly enjoying the ambiance of the lower city, the dense and unforgiving foot traffic tried its best to bait her temper out. People seemed to jostle her on purpose every few moments, though she understood that it was likely just something customary of the Urzran populace here and tried not to let it bother her overmuch. On the other hand, Merlo seemed to take it as a challenge, thumping incoming Urzrans aside with a surprising ease that brought a smile to Branwen’s face.
“Is this it?” Merlo’s voice came out as skeptical. They stood on a relatively quiet corner where they could talk for a moment without feeling like stones cast into the river of focused pedestrian traffic. The building in question was large and multi-story, but not one of the ones that extended out of the roof of the man-made cavern. This structure was more rounded than most others, with a large, elaborate glasteel dome from which shone the lights of some sort of event going on inside.
“Yes. Supposedly it is some sort of advanced gambling hall.” They hadn’t been able to get an appointment with Yustari, but rumor had it that he apparently “held court” of a sort in his establishment most every night. Branwen would have to talk their way in to see him on her own merits.
Destiny Abounds (Starlight Saga Book 1) Page 30
