“Yep, and easier than trying to hide the thing ourselves.”
“How long do it be take?”
“Five to ten minutes. The entire pod will break down into a small cloud of harmless gas that will dissipate in the air within moments. Only the various bits and pieces of the wreckage no longer connected to the pod will remain, but I’m afraid we don’t have time to worry about that.”
“Me do be hide tracks,” he said, surprising her. She looked back over her shoulder and winced at the clear trail she was leaving in the thin layer of snow that had begun sticking.
“Thanks, Jinjie,” she said in relief when the snow began to fill in her tracks. Just as she reached the halfway point between the life pod and the trees, the fresh air venting into her suit carried the smell of wood smoke. She looked up at the sky, squinting through the snow until she spotted a thin spire of dark gray smoke rising above the trees about two miles from where they stood. If not for the wind blowing toward them she was sure they would never have noticed it. She paused, staring at the smoke as the newly familiar sensation of yearning flooded her.
“Do you smell that?” she asked as she continued climbing. She wasn’t even breathless and she’d climbed half a mile on a rocky steep surface at a quick pace. She wasn’t sure if she had Aunt Aisling’s workouts to thank, or Wolef’s magic, but whichever it was, she was grateful.
“Smoke of wood,” Jinjie replied. “What do be you thinking?”
“I’m wondering whether we should make our way toward the smoke, or away from it. Fire generally indicates the presence of people, but there’s no way to know ahead of time who those people are, or how they’ll feel about two uninvited strangers showing up in their midst. On the other hand, I can’t quite imagine the Doftle using something as primitive as fire for anything.”
“Camo do be hide us, no?”
“Yes, that’s true,” she agreed, then bent her head and picked up her pace as a fresh urge to hurry swept through her. She didn’t know where it was coming from, or what it meant, but it didn’t occur to her for a moment not to trust her instincts.
By the time she reached the tree line the need to hide had gotten so strong that she was nearly running full out. The moment she stepped beneath the cover of the trees she stopped to catch her breath, then stilled when she heard the low thrum of air vessels overhead. “Are my tracks covered?” she asked, squinting through the falling snow.
“Yes, do be no track of us and pod do be dissolved.”
She reached into the front pouch of her suit and pressed a button to close the suit’s vents, then activated the camouflage, warning Jinjie to do the same in a low voice. Then she hunkered down behind the trunk of what appeared to be an enormous pine tree and looked up at the gray sky just as three spaceplanes, vehicles equally comfortable in a planetary atmosphere or in space, came into view from over the tops of the trees, heading straight toward their crash site.
The first had the size and utilitarian, box-like shape of a troop transport, but the other two much smaller craft, flying behind and slightly higher than the first in close formation, had the lean, deadly look of fighters. Salene’s fathers had drilled her and her sisters well in identifying the warships of every significant power in the Thousand Worlds, and she searched her memory in an effort to identify the ones overhead, but these vehicles were of completely unfamiliar design. Yet, for some reason, her blood ran cold at the sight of them. She held her breath as they flew over the spot where the life pod had been twenty minutes earlier, releasing it only when they’d passed by without any sign of slowing or stopping.
“Were those familiar to you at all, Jinjie?”
“No, they do be not. But Jinjie do be not liking them.”
“No, I don’t much like them either.” Just as she reached to turn off the camo, Jinjie hissed softly, then waved his hands, causing a flurry of orange sparks to fill the air immediately around them.
“Something do be coming,” he whispered when the sparks faded. He waved his hands again, but this time Salene saw no evidence of the reason for it. “Do be having bubble of silence.”
“No one can hear us?”
“Or smell,” Jinjie said. “Erase scent trail too.”
“What is it?”
“Evil,” Jinjie said just as the sound of flapping wings reached them. Salene looked up in time to see something very big fly over the tree they were hiding behind. As it left the cover of the trees she got a good look at a creature unlike anything she’d ever seen or heard of. It was roughly the size of a horse, but it had green scaled skin, a long reptilian tail, and enormous leathery wings that reminded her vaguely of a bat. That was all she saw as it passed overhead, then it was flying away from them, following in the path of the air transports. She started to relax when the creature passed over their crash sight. Then it turned and circled the area before landing on four bird-like feet before folding its wings against its back. She had no trouble now seeing the deformed canine head as it lowered its nose to the snow covered ground and began sniffing. After a very long minute during which Salene barely dared to breathe, the creature lifted its head, stretched out its wings, and looked in their direction.
Salene’s heart stopped, but Jinjie tapped her lightly on the shoulder, gaining her instant attention though she didn’t take her eyes off the creature. “More do be coming,” he said just before her ears picked up the sound of more flapping wings. She relaxed a little when she saw that the first creature wasn’t looking at them, but at the sky above them. A short time later three more creatures flew overhead and into sight, each one as big as the first, but each slightly different from the other. One had fur, one had feathers, and the third had scales, like the first one. Two of them had humanoid hands and feet instead of claws, and their heads were all different. One had a feline appearance, one looked like a goat, and the last one looked vaguely bird-like. It had a beak, anyway. She wasn’t altogether sure what the rest of its features were from and didn’t think she wanted to know. The only thing they all had in common was wings, and even those were different from one to the other.
Salene watched, wondering how she was going to fight them all off if she and Jinjie were spotted. More than ever she wished she knew how to use the power of her bond. Both Jinjie and Wolef had repeatedly assured her that when she needed it, it would work. She could only hope they were right, and that her hand lasers would be effective against the creatures if they weren’t. As badly as those things smelled, she didn’t want to have to get close enough to retrieve her knives or sai if she was forced to use them.
The new creatures flew toward the first one and circled overhead, but didn’t appear to be readying themselves to land. Her relief when the first creature leapt into the air and joined the others was so great that her entire body shook.
“What are those things, Jinjie?” she asked, returning her hand laser to her pocket as they shrank in the distance.
“Hybrids,” Jinjie said, his lip curled in disgust.
Salene shuddered. Given what she knew about the Doftles’ penchant for genetic experimentation, she really didn’t need more of an explanation than that. “Do you know if they’re intelligent?”
“Some do be, some do be not,” Jinjie replied. “Bigger is less smarter, but Doftle do be not knowing why.”
“Let’s hope they don’t figure that out anytime soon,” she said. “That first creature scented something, probably bits of the pod that were scattered around the area. My question is, can it communicate that to whoever’s in those transports?”
“Maybe,” Jinjie said. “Me not be hearing of hybrid what do be speak, but other ways do be work sometimes.”
Salene looked up at the cloud filled sky after they’d both turned off the camo and reopened their suit vents. “This storm is growing worse, and none of those hybrids looked particularly well suited for cold weather as far as I could tell. I doubt they’ll be too many of them flying around for a while, but just in case, can you sense them again?”
“That’s good to know,” Salene said, allowing herself a sigh of relief. “What do you think? Shall we go see what those things, and the ships, were up to, and why there’s smoke on the air?”
Jinjie nodded his agreement, but said nothing. Neither one of them had a good feeling about what they might find, but if there was a possibility that someone needed help, Salene could not turn away from it and, apparently, neither could Jinjie.
After warning Jinjie to hang on tight, she began jogging through the trees, heading toward the smoke she’d seen earlier. The ground was firm, even, and mostly free of snow beneath the trees, which made moving fast much easier.
“Do we be having way to be found?” Jinjie asked after a few minutes.
“There’s an emergency beacon in the survival pack,” she replied. “I’ll have to modify it before we can risk using it, but that won’t be too difficult.”
“Mo-di-fy?” Jinjie asked curiously, pronouncing the word slowly.
“Make changes to it,” she explained, silently thanking her parents for making her and her sisters attend survival classes every summer during their teens, despite her resistance. Not to mention Dede’s occasional tutoring in basic electronics, which she attended with greater enthusiasm. “Since I don’t know where we are, it’ll have to wait until dark so I can see the stars.”
“Do be waiting for storm passing, too.”
“Yes, that too.”
“What do we be doing if Blind Sight is here?”
Salene frowned. “I’m not sure I understand your question, Jinjie.”
“Blind Sight do be block signals, no?”
“Oh, I see,” she said. “That’s a good question and I actually have an answer because I asked Khurda of the Khun the same thing.”
“Kurdofkun do be what?”
“Khurda of the Khun,” she repeated, enunciating more clearly. “The Khun are the people my youngest sister, Tani, helped free from the Nomen on Garza.”
“I do be see,” Jinjie said. “He do be knowing Blind Sight?”
“He’s reverse engineered a few of them, including the one that was being used to hide Garza, and he’s built several of them himself, including some handy personal Blind Sights that can be worn around the neck.”
“Jinjie do be liking sound of those.”
“Yes, me too,” Salene agreed. “Anyway, when the Ugaztun first reached Garza, which was hidden by Blind Sight, we found it because of a signal Tani sent up. I didn’t understand how that was possible so when I discovered he was the Blind Sight expert, I asked him about it. It seems that a planet sized Blind Sight can’t block all signals because if it did, it would also lock in things like the fraction of the sun’s heat that the planet radiates back into space as infrared energy, which would cook the planet. It would also require a prohibitive amount of power to run. For that and other reasons, Planetary Blind Sights are different than the ones used on space stations, ships, buildings and the like. They’ll make a planet invisible, and they’ll block external scans and signals while returning false negatives, but that’s all they can do. Even that is no longer effective once a ship gets close enough to the planet.”
“How close?”
“That fluctuates depending on the size of the planet and the power of the Blind Sight unit itself. What it means to us is that our signal can get out. It also means that if the Doftles have a settlement on this planet, it’s going to be hidden by a separate, full-spectrum Blind Sight.”
“Me do be see,” Jinjie said. “But me do be not knowing if news do be good, or do be bad.”
“I’ve realized lately that that’s true about most things.”
***
“I’ve got it,” Kar shouted triumphantly. Jon and Talus hurried over to where he sat while the computer was still processing incoming signals and pinpointing their locations. “There they are.”
“That’s quite some distance,” Jon said, surprised.
“It is, but there’s no mistake,” Kar said. “The only thing that troubles me is that I’m only picking up six signals. Not seven.”
“Let’s wait until we have them all inside before we jump to conclusions,” Talus said, nodding at Captain Royce who was standing nearby. Royce returned the nod, then left to give orders to his crew.
The next few hours were filled with both anticipation and fear for the Gryphons. The Aegl could have easily reached the life pods in minutes at speed, but if the seventh life pod was floating around without a transmitter, it would be all too easy to hit without even realizing it, so they were forced to proceed at a virtual crawl. Besides, they had the wreckage right behind them to think of as well. If they went too fast, it would take them twice as long to reduce their speed.
“There,” Kar said a little too loudly, but no one noticed as they all turned to look through the viewport at the first life pod. With immense relief and no small amount of worry, it was brought aboard and opened.
When Captain Jake opened his eyes, he gasped in pain and his face paled. “He needs to get to Medical,” Talus said noting the odd angle of the man’s shoulder. Jake was frowning as he struggled to make his brain work. By the time a stretcher was brought for him the initial disorientation and confusion caused by the hyper-sleep gas had cleared and his memory had returned.
“Commander Talus,” he said, reaching up with his good arm to grip Talus’s wrist. “Did you find Princess Salene yet?”
“No, Captain, but you’re the first one we’ve brought in. We’ve only identified six signals so far.”
“I sent Salene out first,” he said. “It’s unlikely she’ll be with the group.”
“The six of you launched together, is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Captain Jake said, relaxing. “She’s alive, Commander. You have to find her.”
“We will, Captain Jake. Don’t worry. We won’t stop looking until we do.”
“Thank you,” he whispered, then closed his eyes against the pain in his shattered bones when the medics moved him.
Over the course of the next couple of hours the remaining five life pods were found and brought aboard. One man had a broken arm, and another had a mild concussion, but otherwise they were alive and well. Each and every one of them asked about Salene, and credited her with saving their lives by prepping all of the life pods ahead of time.
While Talus, Jon, and Kar were touched by the depth of the crew’s concern for Salene, it didn’t come close to their own fear. So far, they still hadn’t been able to find any sign of the seventh life pod.
***
The smoke had stopped rising by the time Salene reached a small clearing surrounded by closely spaced trees and thick brush in what appeared to be a manmade barrier. She worked her way through the brush as silently as she could, then crouched down behind a tree to study the scene before her.
There were four crude huts in the clearing, one of which had been the source of the fire before the snow-wet green branches that made up the exterior walls stifled it. There were signs that a brief and violent skirmish had taken place. Several baskets had been overturned and crushed, doors were kicked in, and the circle of stones surrounding a thick layer of gray ash in what had once been a large communal fireplace in the center of the clearing were now scattered everywhere. What she didn’t see were people.
“Do you sense evil, Jinjie?”
“Traces what do be fading.”
“Those things certainly do stink,” she said, wrinkling her nose behind the clear face panel of her suit. She debated whether or not to close her suit vents, and reluctantly decided it would be better to leave them open. After a long and careful study of the clearing, the huts, and the surrounding trees, she turned her suit camo on and waited for Jinjie to do the same. Then she drew the hand laser from her pocket, flipped the safety off and stepped out of cover and into the clearing. She crossed it slowly, spotting blood in severa
l areas, though not as much as she expected. There were partial footprints on the hard ground here and there, but they meant nothing to her. She checked the burned hut first and swallowed hard when she saw a human, or at least humanoid, body on the floor, too badly burned for her to tell from where she stood whether it had been male or female. There were three pallets on the floor, scattered and mussed, but just the one body.
She backed out of the doorway and went to the next hut. She counted four pallets on the floor and, since there were no bodies, she took a closer look. The pallets were made of branches and needles from the surrounding trees and covered neatly with rough gray blankets. A rickety table fashioned from still more branches stood to one side of the room, and another, smaller platform against one wall held an odd collection of wooden cups, bowls, plates, and spoons.
“Why don’t I see any sign of those hybrids?” she asked in a low voice as they left the hut.
“They do be not in clearing,” Jinjie said, pointing up at the trees overhead.
“Can you tell who did all this?”
“No, do be sense evil, but no more.”
Salene nodded and moved to the third hut which wasn’t much different from the second one except that there were clear signs of a struggle. The table was broken, the pallets scattered so thoroughly that she couldn’t tell how many of them there’d been, and a trail of blood led across the packed dirt floor and out into the clearing.
She turned toward the last and smallest hut, its door hanging by one leather hinge. Slightly less wary now since they’d seen no sign of life as yet, she approached it more quickly than she had the others. Stepping around the hanging door and into the doorway, a little preoccupied by the growing intensity of her yearning, she’d already taken one step into the hut before freezing in shock at the sight before her.
This hut was much the same as the others except that there was a man with long, iron gray hair lying on the floor a couple of feet from the doorway. He was quite dead, which was obvious considering the massive hole where his chest should have been. It wasn’t the dead man that shocked her though. It was the enormous silver wolf lying beside him.
Salene's Secrets Page 14
