by Lynn Rae
“Casta, wake up!” Chin interrupted Lazlo’s musings with a sharp voice. “What’s distracting you? Message from Serra, I bet. Still the star of her own melodrama?” Chin was entirely unsympathetic with Lazlo’s history with the woman. He’d heard the bare essentials about Lazlo’s situation the first night they went out and had been very harsh in all of his subsequent advice about the relationship. Detective Chin was a walking fount of wisdom when it came to women, addicts, liars and abuse and rightfully so, since those were vices he dealt with every day.
“She’s still addicted to unhappiness and I’m sure lots of other things,” was Lazlo’s dour update. “She messaged me again.”
“Tell me you didn’t reply.”
“I didn’t and I’m not going to either. That makes three times now, Chin, so will you admit that I’m learning?”
“Good. Now we just need you to find someone else, someone pleasant and short-term to break you in again and you’ll be good as new.”
“And where exactly on Sayre would I find such a woman? Everyone here is at work or asleep,” Lazlo shot back as he started to stack the absolute essential items next to his pack. Maybe he was the only one at this port who spent all of his time working or sleeping. The detective always seemed to have someone to meet later for drinks, unlike Lazlo.
“Right. You need someone who is awake, has some free time every few weeks and is not covered in weird fungal growths. I’ll find someone for you, someone sweet and sexy who is looking for a big guy like you. I’m sure there are a few women out there who prefer hulking fellows to refined specimens such as myself.”
*
Yawning, Del waited for Lieutenant Casta behind a line of date palms along the road heading south, away from the port and toward their search area. It was early and she tried to look inconspicuous but there were still plenty of ag bots and human workers in the fields and on the road, continuing with work that had begun before the sun emerged that morning. The air around her smelled of fertilizer, dust, compost and above all, living and growing plants. It was the Sayre that humans needed, but her Sayre was out in the wilderness—silent, rugged, filled with geothermal spots, exotic fungi and mystery.
She hoped Casta had managed to find enough gear to make it through the day and that he’d remembered to bring scanners from the security station. She didn’t have anything approaching the power of the sensor he had promised. If its capabilities were as he described, they might actually have a chance of discovering the cache of weapons—either through detecting the rare elements themselves, or the hollow space that they would be in. Having to do a manual and visual search along hundreds of feet of cliffs was doomed to failure.
A tall male figure approached her, walking easily along the road with his long and strong legs, lugging a pack and carrying two cups. It was Casta, looking bright and bashful underneath a battered hat. His shades were slung around his neck and he seemed ready to go.
“Good morning, Citizen Browen,” he greeted her as she started the motor. He handed her a cup and shrugged his pack into the back of the cart, then climbed up next to her, thighs bulging, big dusty boots on the cart floor.
“What’s this?”
“Coffee.” He dug into his shirt pocket and retrieved some packets “I brought sugar, cinnamon, lemon and cream, since I didn’t know how you liked it.”
“How do you know if I even like coffee?”
Lazlo looked taken aback and Del repressed her grumpiness. “Hey, I like coffee, I just didn’t get much sleep last night. Don’t listen to me until I’ve had a few sips.”
“I didn’t sleep much either. That’s why I picked up the coffee.”
She nodded and smiled a little, then pulled the vehicle out on the road and accelerated south, dodging agricultural equipment as they traveled. Casta obediently added lemon to her coffee as she requested and busied himself as he doctored his own.
“Did you find everything on your list?” She had her doubts that he had. That’s why she’d packed an extra set of everything and stowed it in the cart undercarriage that morning.
Lazlo shook his head and glanced at her. “No, there were a few things like thermal tape and a personal reflector that I didn’t have. But I did borrow two of the sensors and a long-transmit antenna too, so we can try to send data live to the port today rather than wait until we return.” She nodded, impressed that he’d tried so hard to comply with her request. They could likely get by without his extra thermal tape and the reflector. As long as no disasters struck.
“When might a satellite be overhead?”
“None today, but there will be one tomorrow afternoon.”
Del nodded again. She’d left a record of where they were exploring for her father and mother, on a time release. If she hadn’t returned and disabled it within twenty-four hours, it would ping to them and let them know where to start searching. It seemed the most reasonable thing to do, despite her pledge to not talk about this with anyone. After all, she hadn’t actually told anyone what she was doing at this point, and with luck, never technically would.
They were passing the big fields now, leaving behind the earliest cultivated sections of Sayre, which were now mostly established orchards and high-yield vegetable plots. The newer, big fields contained immense swathes of grain crops and had fewer machines and workers. Those were only active at planting, harvest and intermittent applications of soil conditioners.
Del sped up the cart and sipped her coffee. It was very good. It had been a long time since she had treated herself to the expensive beverage.
“Thank you for the coffee. It’s very good.”
“You’re welcome.” Lazlo grinned at her, eyes hidden behind shaded lenses as she’d instructed, and she was struck again by how open and friendly the man was. She felt very at ease around him, which wasn’t her usual state around strangers. Which made her even more cautious.
“So who are we reporting back to, if we can get the transmission to go?”
“Major Sekar. He’s the only one who knows what we’re doing.”
“Why all the secrecy? Between the confidentiality agreement and having to meet behind the date palms, I’m curious.”
Lazlo leaned back and Del watched as he took a breath. He had a very broad chest. “Several reasons. One, these weapons we’re after would be very valuable on the underground market. If people knew they were here, we’d be competing with off-world salvagers, which nobody wants.”
Del nodded at this, momentarily regretting she wouldn’t be able to take a stab at selling the things herself and making some real marks. But she had agreed to act as a guide and not claim possession of the things if they ever found them. She was a person of her word. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t look for other interesting things along the way.
“And another reason is possible interference from Sheriff Harata. He doesn’t take well to having port personnel in his jurisdiction, let alone having one of us doing something official out here. So we need to avoid him even seeing us—well, me actually, so that he doesn’t trump up some charge to hold me. He could make me disappear for quite a while.” Lazlo looked grim.
“I want him to avoid seeing me as well. Do you think he would arrest me too?”
Casta looked over at her and was quiet a moment. “Probably.” He must have noticed her dismay because he added some reassurance. “But that’s not going to happen. We’re going to be discreet. With just the two of us, no one should notice anything. That’s why the major set the operation up like this rather than send out a platoon of uniformed security in an armored convoy. Anybody looking at us will see two people out for some sightseeing or a picnic.”
“Right. Let’s hope.”
Lazlo cleared his throat and looked over at Citizen Browen. Del Browen. He wanted to call her Del, but that would be presumptuous. Despite her brusque manner, he felt more and more that she was a nice person. Quiet and serious and probably more comfortable out on her own. Here he was asking her to risk her freedom and he
r family’s security to help him in this search. He hadn’t negotiated the reward price with her when they’d reached an agreement for her services, merely signed off on the full amount that Major Sekar had budgeted. That amount seemed too paltry now.
Lazlo had spent a little time looking over her public data. She didn’t update her information very often and most of the fields that would have revealed something about herself she’d left blank. No mention of entertainments she liked or updates on things she’d done or places she’d gone.
Her sister Dee Dee’s information was vast and ever changing—constant observations on her work and meals and clothes and meetings. It had exhausted him after about a minute and he had returned to reviewing her sister’s torpid data. He suspected that Dee Dee had cajoled her sister into posting the trivial amount of information available. Del was pretty too, in an unadorned way. She obviously didn’t spend a lot of time on her appearance, but considering what she did every day, restraint made sense.
Lazlo wondered what she would look like dressed up for a nice dinner. Then he started to wonder about other aspects of her body and that was exactly what he warned himself not to do—so he decided to talk with her instead of look at her and think about her.
“So would you care to tell me why you like going out here?”
She adjusted her hat and shades a bit and cleared her throat. “Ever since I was little, I’ve loved it. All of that space to experience. It always felt safe and welcoming out here, unlike the port, where everything seems dirty and broken. And crowded with noisy people. I love the air and sky and rocks out here. Especially the rocks.” She glanced over at him. “You probably think that’s weird.”
“No I don’t. People have all sorts of interests. Why rocks?” Stars, if she thought the port was noisy and crowded, she should never travel to Weave or Gebisa. She’d go catatonic with stress. But he definitely understood the peace she must feel out here on her own. He felt that way whenever he was on a wave board out on the ocean at home on Freton.
“Because rocks are beautiful, aren’t they?” Del didn’t wait for him to answer. “For me, it was the color and textures at first, then when I really started to study them, learning how they form over time, their composition and properties. It’s all fascinating. How one has the ability to refract light while another is incredibly dense. Some are pushed up to the surface from deep below the mantle. And of course, there are the craters from meteor strikes. Those are full of strange samples. No one knows much about the actual geology of Sayre. So I have to learn as I go. Did you know there are magnetized sand dunes out here?”
He shook his head, not really understanding her enthusiasm for magnetic sand but enjoying her openness. This was the first he’d seen her relaxed and happy and it made her even more appealing. They were passing little evidence of human agriculture now, just large fields of grains and construction equipment intended to excavate and irrigate more fields. Expansion of the agricultural business continued without a pause on Sayre.
“Those dunes are so interesting. I sent a sample to a collector and she reported back that when the container arrived on her planet, they were inert. All magnetic polarization was gone. This planet has some wonky internal workings. That’s why it’s so hard to get reliable tracking out here. I wish I could—” Del abruptly stopped talking as the cart jolted underneath them, splashing the coffee out of the cups and nearly sending him to the floorboards.
“Sorry! I should have slowed down for that, I just got distracted.” Del grinned as she drove the cart along a rough path. The jolt had been the cart leaving the pavement, which had ended in an abrupt line at the edge of the fields. Now they were on uneven ground heading toward some low, dark hills on the horizon. Lazlo mopped at the coffee spills with some napkins. “Don’t ask me about geology unless you want to be bored to sleep. At least that’s what my family says.”
“I wasn’t bored.” Which was true. This planet did have some strange properties, which had played havoc with most of the remote monitoring devices they’d tried to send up. Trixie had been working for months on modifying drones that still tended to crash frequently or fail to keep up their end of the conversation after a few hours.
“You weren’t bored yet, but you would have been in about five minutes. Dozing in about ten.” She sounded cheerful enough about it.
“I doubt I would be able to doze on this drive,” Lazlo replied as the vehicle took another abrupt nosedive. He managed to not spill his coffee this time though.
“It doesn’t matter anyway. We should probably talk about our plan for today.”
Lazlo nodded and realized he didn’t want to talk about what they were here to do, at least not yet. He wanted to hear more about Del’s rocks. But she had returned to serious and reserved.
“So what is our plan?”
Del nodded, looking thoughtful as she rubbed one gloved hand on her cheek. “As I mentioned last night, today we should search around that first set of coordinates. Of course, they’re probably not accurate to within a half mile or so, but the topography in that area isn’t too extreme and I think we will be able to make a decent attempt in a few hours. It’s good practice for when we have to go into harder country.”
“If we have to keep looking. We might get lucky today.” Lazlo felt optimistic. It was a beautiful day and adventure awaited.
“Doubtful. I just don’t have that feeling yet.” Del shook her head and glanced at him with a resigned twist of her lips.
“What feeling?”
“Just something I get sometimes when something really wonderful is close by. And I don’t have it.” Del rubbed her fingers in her hair and looked around, contemplative. That left her brown hair sticking up in angry spikes and he wanted to smooth them down, it would be a good excuse to touch— No. No touching.
Lazlo tried to boost her confidence. “We aren’t close enough to the coordinates yet. Not that I doubt your intuition, but I wish that we had some broad-spectrum sensor drones. Five or six of those would make the whole operation go that much more quickly.”
“How about getting better maps while we’re at it?”
“I guess if we had drones and maps, we would be out and back in a few hours.”
Del laughed, a full-throated guffaw that made him laugh along with her. “Where would be the fun in that, I ask you?”
“No fun at all,” Lazlo agreed with a smile but then they hit another dip and he bit his tongue. He decided to hold on the grab bars for a while and let her concentrate on driving.
Chapter Four
Lazlo checked his datpad again and sighed. The custom geolocator he’d installed on his personal device kept positioning them in a cornfield at least forty kilometers from where he thought they actually were, and not knowing his location was making him anxious. Del Browen just kept hiking, pulling herself up slopes and sliding down gullies as if she was exploring someone’s backyard. Water dripped from the walls of the canyon they were exploring fruitlessly and the sound made him thirsty.
“Could we stop for a moment? I’d like to recalibrate my geolocator.” His guide stopped and turned to look at him, expression neutral as she pulled a small bottle from her waist and took a sip. So far she hadn’t said much to him, other than to order him to look in certain places and use his scanner.
Lazlo requested an update on his datpad and waited for an acknowledgement. Del watched him for a moment, then began to scan the mucky floor of the canyon, shuffling along, head down, apparently more interested in mud than what he was doing. Or failing to do. The third attempt he made to recalibrate was concluded yet again by an apologetic error message. Crack it.
“Citizen Browen, do you know where we are? My equipment is not really working well.”
“I know where we are,” was her calm reply. She was now crouched in the mud, poking at something with a gloved fingertip.
“Where are we?”
“Section eighty-seven, grid nineteen, focal point sixteen or seventeen. Approximately.”
<
br /> Feeling exasperated, Lazlo tried not to sound it as he manually plugged in the numbers, his geolocator chiming happily. “How do you know that?”
“I was in this area once, about eight years ago.”
And of course she remembered it. At least she seemed entirely competent and confident in what she was doing, Lazlo tried to assure himself. That made one of them. She had now pulled out whatever interested her and was rinsing it in a puddle of water.
“Are we close to the search coordinates?”
“We’ve been in the middle of them for the last hour.”
And they hadn’t found anything. He would have noticed something like that, wouldn’t he? “What’s that you’re washing there?”
Then Del looked at him, gray eyes bright. “My guess is some sort of garnet matrix, but I have no idea of what the inclusions are. There are a lot of them around here.” She shrugged and pitched the rock back to the ground.
Taking a drink of water, Lazlo watched her. She was watching him and looking as if she were trying to understand something as she narrowed her eyes. “What is it?”
“Nothing. Just wondering if you’re ready to keep going.”
She nodded.
Lazlo walked after her as Del headed into a narrow opening in the canyon wall, formed by two pieces of dark-red rock that had fallen against each other. Lazlo wondered if he would be able to fit through it—she was much more slender than he.
Del slid through with no trouble and told him to toss his pack through first, then follow. It was an uncomfortably tight squeeze and the crumbling rocks scraped against his face and body as he pushed his way through. Lazlo almost didn’t manage past one inclined boulder, but finally did thanks to vigorous tugs on his outstretched arms by Del, who grinned at him when he finally emerged on the other side.
She waited to release his arms until he got his boots under him, then Del made a few moves to straighten his shirt, which was askew. Her thin fingers brushed over him with little presses and strokes. Lazlo felt twitchy, as if more than his clothes had been pulled out of place.
