The Rylerran Gateway

by Mark Ian Kendrick

  “What’s that?”

  “A pilot.”

  “Huh? Why would they approve a grant and not give you a pilot?” She gave him a bewildered look.

  “I have no idea. They said available ships are scarce right now and it’ll be a few months before they can get someone who’s willing to take us there. Our window of opportunity will either be in the next two months or we have to wait for over a year and a half. I have no intention of going there in the midst of a northern hemisphere winter.”

  “I don’t get it. We get mining shipments from Rylerra all the time. What’s wrong with one of those ships?”

  “I asked the same question. Corporate law doesn’t allow non-mining personnel to travel on mining ships.”

  “Well, what are you going to do?”

  “What do you think? I’m gonna wait,” he said, exasperated.

  They were quiet for a moment while both of them thought about the silliness of approving a grant while not providing all the requisite components.

  “At least the dig next week doesn’t rely on a pilot,” Naylon stated, breaking the silence.

  Alista crossed her arms, feeling as dejected as did Naylon did about the ‘partial-grant’ he’d been offered. “At least,” she echoed.

  “That’s everything,” Merek said. He added his backpack to the items in the back of the vehicle and pressed the button on the hatch. It closed slowly, then snapped shut.

  Naylon was in the driver’s seat already and pressed the on-switch. The vehicle rose up several feet moments after Merek took his place on the passenger side.

  Darreth studied the map on the back of Naylon’s seat. He had insisted on taking this trip with Naylon and his entourage. He wanted to see what it was they did on a dig. This was the perfect opportunity for him to see what it was all about. He adjusted the screen’s brightness, then zoomed the image out slightly. “Balmoral Keep. It’s hot out that way.”

  “It’ll be thirty degrees, if not more,” Naylon told him. He set the coordinates and the navigation system laid out the course. The estimated arrival time was in three hours and eight minutes.

  “Thunder, it’s thirty-five degrees out there,” Darreth said as he glanced at the display on the dash. The side door popped up. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and shaded his eyes. It felt like he was inside an oven. They were all on the main street at Balmoral Keep. He looked down the road. Heat waves shimmered at the end of it.

  The town had been built at the edge of the Gartenda desert region. It was small as towns went in the interior of the continent. The main street was slightly over one kilometer long. Several more streets, perpendicular to the main one had shops, labs, a small administrative office, restaurants and the homes of the permanent residents of the town. Naylon knew several of the shop owners. He had been at this dig site six times previously.

  The dig site was eight kilometers west of town. Before they could leave, they had to check in with local authorities to let them know where they were going, and re-supply their vehicle with water and food.

  The dig site was as primitive as they had been for well over a millennium. Tarps on poles shielded the paleontologists and students from the blazing heat over large open pits. The pits were marked in a grid comprised of short metal poles and string. Several different layers of strata were exposed and half a dozen students were busy brushing dirt away with whiskbrooms, tiny picks and even screwdrivers. Everything was done manually. None of the normal automated tools were ever used when it came to students. Nonetheless, a couple of them were using a shovel bot to move overburden, which had to be removed to reach the level of strata they were interested in analyzing.

  Naylon was expected, so it took scant minutes to check in with the head of the dig, a professor from Tokaias University. His old major professor, to be exact. Normally, digs of this nature would be off-limits to anyone not specifically involved with the university. But this one was different. Teams of people had been working the site for years now on a constantly rotating basis, mostly for class projects. In fact, the current team would be finished by this evening. Then it would be just Merek, Naylon and Darreth. Darreth welcomed the chance to be in the outdoors under a real sky for a change. As much as he loved his job he still felt the need to be planetside and outside as often as possible.

  Naylon’s objective was to gather some samples from a fossilized streambed he had discovered a while back. He needed them for a special project he’d been researching on some early single-celled microorganisms that had cleverly used salicic acid to construct their shells, thus uniquely fossilizing them. This dig and the project associated with it were completely unrelated to the project and the fossils he needed from Rylerra.

  Before anything was unloaded from the transport vehicle, they decided lunch was in order. They found a location to put up the tents shortly thereafter.

  Naylon was quite impressed Darreth would bother to follow them into a hot dusty desert. The space station and crafts that shuttled through their system were pristine environments. He figured Darreth would hate being in this one.

  “Are you kidding?” Darreth told him upon hearing that. “I love being out in wide open spaces. Fresh air is ten times better than any of the scented bottled air on any ship in the fleet.”

  “Oh I just figured…”

  “You just don’t know me all that well yet. I hope I can change that as rapidly as possible.” He drew Naylon close and kissed him sensuously. None of the nearby students who saw that take place so much as blinked an eye at their open display of affection.

  That evening, after a short dinner, Merek talked a lot about the amount of money he thought was being spent guarding pharmas. Darreth tried to be polite, but as the barrage of criticism continued, he felt he needed to set the record straight.

  “Look, our world has ample resources for very long term profits. I’m not a manager, a profiteer or a capital investor but I can tell you what we do is extremely important.”

  “Important enough to kill for?” Merek retorted, almost as if baiting Darreth.

  “Whoa,” Darreth shot back, becoming more irritated. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “There are a lot of people who think the Space Navy represents something Andakar shouldn’t stand for.”

  “Like what?” Darreth coaxed. He’d heard it all already but wanted to know what Merek thought, too.

  “Hegemony. Murder. War. That’s for starters.”

  To Darreth it sounded like Merek were deliberately trying to antagonize him with those accusations. “What? We don’t murder people. We’re protecting Andakar from pirates. That has to be something everyone can agree on.” He looked back and forth between Merek and Naylon.

  Naylon had found the exchange amusing for a moment, then realized he’d better settle it right now before Merek got himself into real trouble. “Uh, Merek. You do remember that Darreth follows the trade routes. He does the patrols that keep pirates from stealing our stuff. The stuff that makes our planet as wealthy as it is. You might want to reconsider all of that.”

  Merek was suddenly alarmed. “Sorry.” He looked genuinely embarrassed. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  The next morning at breakfast Darreth and Naylon were up before Merek. Darreth was still miffed at Merek’s assessment of the Space Navy. “There must be an awful PR firm running offense for us planetside,” he told Naylon.

  “About what?” Naylon asked after he licked the spoon from coring a purple noga fruit.

  Darreth lowered his voice. “Merek used the word murder to describe my job. Where do people come up with those ideas? We protect planetary assets. How many times do I have to tell people that? That has to be worth a lot more than false accusations. I’m glad you don’t think that way.”

  “I know you don’t murder anyone. But there are some people who think the Space Navy invites people who want to slaughter and oppress.” He instantly knew he shouldn’t have said that. There were only two people he knew who thought that way
and they were in his discussion group.

  “Oh, now it’s slaughter and oppression, too,” Darreth said slapping his thighs. “When has the Space Navy ever been about that?”

  “Well… not yet anyway.”

  Darreth was completely taken aback by the tone the discussion had already taken. He wanted clarification now. “Care to elaborate?”

  “Some people think differently about the Space Navy.”

  That much he knew for sure. “Do those someones include you?”

  Naylon only stared back, not sure what to say.

  “Look, if you don’t want me here just say so and I’ll leave,” Darreth offered, suddenly wondering what had brought this up from Naylon. He had known Darreth was in the Space Navy since they first met. Why now, when things were going so well between them, did this come up?

  Naylon dropped the spoon with a loud clatter onto the tabletop. He stood, walked around the table then sat down next to Darreth. “I’m sorry. The answer is no,” he said, vigorously shaking his head. “I’ve, uh, been listening to too many of my friends, that’s all. And I guess Merek’s heard me talking about it.”

  “What friends?”

  Naylon gave him a very short explanation of the discussion group he’d been attending. He left out most of the details.

  “They don’t sound like friends to me. What I do is protect planetary assets,” he said as he tapped the tabletop with the last three words. “And I’m damn good at what I do, too,” he added, now feeling genuinely offended and hurt.

  “I know. I know,” Naylon looked into the distance. Clouds were coming in from the west near the mountain range further on. “My parents would be proud.”

  “I don’t need your parents’ approval.”

  “No, no. It’s because they’re pharma techs,” he explained. “They’d be proud of what you do because you’re helping to make sure that what they do makes a profit.” The wind kicked up a dustdevil not more than five meters off to their right. It swirled around briefly before vanishing as abruptly as it started. “I’m sorry,” Naylon told him. He leaned over and kissed Darreth. “Really. You’ve opened my eyes to the need for your job.”

  Darreth smiled and smoothed back Naylon’s hair. He was quickly forgetting all about his and Merek’s collective academic misunderstandings.

  Eventually Merek woke up, got ready and ate breakfast with the two men. After everything was cleaned up, Darreth accompanied them both to the dig site several hundred meters away from their encampment.

  “See these long flat rocks here?” Naylon indicated to Darreth. He pointed to an exposed area that looked like it had recently faulted, geologically speaking. One side was half a meter lower than the other. There was a distinct one meter thick layer of long round rocks embedded within the exposed face.

  “Yeah, they’re pretty obvious.”

  “This is where we’re going to dig. First, we pull out some of the longer flatter rocks. Then find the cracks along the sides. Like this one.” He dug one out of the fault and pointed to a hairline crack along its side. He set it down on the ground on its edge and rapped it along the crack with his rock hammer. It required three such hits before it split in two, like a pre-scored English muffin. Inside were some squiggles and a long line that looked like a burrow of some sort. It was quite a bit darker than the rock material.

  “Thunder! How did you know it would split like that?”

  “That’s what I do. Merek, this one’s a go.” He handed the two halves to Merek, who placed them in an a-grav cart.

  Naylon used a laser cutter on a section of the exposed hillside. He didn’t need to be exceptionally careful about using it since the laser wasn’t designed to burn into rock, but rather to loosen the much less dense fossilized mud that surrounded them. After a good section of it had been removed, Merek used the radioisotope analyzer to determine the age of the strata, which was within ten thousand years of what they expected. This was precisely what they were looking for. Next Naylon aimed a rock tomograph at some of the flat rocks to determine if any of them were suitable for retrieval. He decided on fourteen, which were all placed in the a-grav cart. They worked for three more hours retrieving the samples they wanted.

  The evening brought temperatures cooler than they anticipated. The three men were sitting under the tall open gazebo tent they had erected against a vertical rock formation. Their trek to the exposed hillside was long behind them now. The rocks they had collected for the day were packed in containers and already loaded into the transport.

  Balmoral Keep had access to a brewery, which was located twenty-five kilometers away in the savanna-like area that marked the transition of the desert to the mountain highlands further on. The beer was much favored in this province. Just after the students packed up their gear the day before, Naylon’s former professor had offered them a nine-pack. The three men had enthusiastically accepted the offer. Now with three open bottles, all of which were half gone, they were watching the stars appear.

  Merek was reading through some of his vidmails on the handheld comm unit he had. He was enveloped in the device’s soundfield. It was designed in such a way that no one else could hear any of the communications with the speakers facing his way.

  “Naylon!” Merek suddenly blurted out from the silence. He sounded very excited.

  Merek’s outburst startled them both. “What?” Naylon responded.

  “The grant was approved. You didn’t say anything!”

  “Did you watch the entire vidmail? We have no way to get there.”

  Merek was quiet for a moment as he watched the rest of the vid. He slammed his nearly empty bottle onto the arm of the chair he was sitting on. “They only partially approved the grant? Why would they do that?”

  “It’s the usual corporate misunderstanding. You’ll get use to it.”

  Merek looked agitated now. “That’s ridiculous. It’s going to delay my paper even longer.”

  Darreth spoke up now. “What grant?”

  Naylon told him all about it.

  When the explanation was completed, Darreth shook his head.

  “What’s that all about?” Naylon asked.

  “For an academic type you sure don’t know how to network.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Who are you going out with?”

  Naylon looked over to Merek.

  “Don’t look at me,” Merek told him. He took the last swig from his beer.

  Naylon looked back at Darreth. “You.”

  “What is it I do for a living?”

  “Uh, you run pirates out of the starlanes.”

  “More specifically?” he urged.

  “You’re a pilot?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you’re in the military.”

  “The spaceport at the Nona Ice Station on Rylerra is ninety-one kilometers from your dig site. I’ve been to that station three times. I know it pretty well, too. I also have clearance to take anyone there. Military or not.”

  Naylon sat upright, feeling the strained muscle in his back that he’d gotten earlier in the day. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  Darreth held his hands out and grinned. “I just did.”

  Chapter 9

  “Just act normally. You’ve already met everyone. It’s not like you’re going into this cold.”

  Naylon stood on the broad front porch of the elegant James-Po home in the foothills of the Patoria Mountains with Darreth. From this height, they could see the lights of the city below that followed the crescent of the bay. The sun was just beginning to descend toward its placid surface. In another hour, the sky would start turning purple as it reached the horizon.

  Darreth’s presence triggered the front door to open. He ushered Naylon inside a spacious entryway. To his left was a sunken living room. Two halves of a tall sliding glass door along the far wall facing the pool had been slid back into the wall. The huge gaping opening brought the outdoors directly into the living room. The setting s
un was streaming into the room turning everything golden.

  Outside Kella and Tann’s tanned bodies glistened as they finished some very noisy laps and were standing in the shallow end of the pool.

  “Kids, they’re here,” Naylon heard from somewhere to his right. It was Siloy’s voice. Naylon was already nervous. He didn’t like being paraded in front of the Chief Council and his family. Both Kella and Tann climbed out of the pool and went for their towels.

  Kyana appeared from down one of the hallways. She was dressed quite a bit more informally than the first time Naylon met her. She had on a thin button-up top and shorts with sandals. She greeted Naylon with a big smile and led both he and Darreth to the kitchen. Two servants were busy preparing snacks.

  Siloy joined them directly. “Dr. Ress, uh, I mean Naylon, nice to have you over.”

  “The pleasure is mine, sir,” Naylon told him as they shook hands again. Nice strong grip, he thought. Just like Darreth’s.

  Siloy held up his finger. “If I can’t call you ‘Dr. Ress’ there will be no sir allowed in this house either,” he said, smiling pleasantly.

  “Uh…”

  “Siloy will do.”

  “Siloy,” Naylon responded. He breathed deeply and exhaled quickly, letting go of even more nervousness. Thunder, he thought. I’m more wound up than I realized.

  Kella and Tann, now dried off and changed, joined them. They both dove into the snacks as soon as they were presented. Everyone moved to the sunken living room and sat down on the plush furniture, where drinks were served, too. Naylon’s nose was teased with the aromas from several courses being prepared in the kitchen as they chatted. Shortly, the call to dinner was announced and everyone found seats around a comfortably round, but not overlarge, dinner table.

  Finally, after talk about a recent water main leak that had flooded a part of the downtown district, the topic came around to Naylon’s research. Naylon gave a brief overview of his work, including the recent approval of his grant.