The wind increased noticeably an hour into the brutal trek. And with visibility this low, the distant strobelights on the lift had disappeared long ago. Timas checked the small radio compass frequently to keep them on track.
And the march continued. Every ten minutes the wind seemed to increase. Timas now bent forward to counter it, and occasionally a small piece of dust would smack the suit loud enough to startle him.
It got better in the second hour as the land rose to their right, creating a windbreak. The wind and dust flowed just over their heads, although now they had rocks and boulders to climb and worry about tripping over.
Timas skirted the hill for the next hour, and at fifteen minutes before the two-hour mark they both stopped, huddling against the bottom of the hill. Timas pressed his visor against Mo’s.
Mo dripped sweat as he yelled, the faint words almost drowned out by the ever-present roar of wind overhead. “We are almost at the turn-back point.”
Timas yelled back. “I know. I’m going to keep going.”
“You’ll get us killed.”
“I’m not asking you to go with me.” He and Mo blinked. But he knew that he had to continue on, and he’d been wondering how he was going to say it to Mo. It was a terrible burden to put on Mo, too similar to the burden Timas had gotten thrust on him when Cen died, and he’d had to face Cen’s relatives. “I want you to turn back. I’m going to keep going in.”
“I will wait here then.”
“Momotzli, I’m not going to be back in half an hour. You should start back now.”
Mo shook his head sadly. “My dad believes the heresy. That’s why he sent me. If his son were the one to help welcome the true gods, the incarnate gods, back to our society, what honor he’d bring. Now you’ll throw your life down for this as well?”
“No.” Timas shook his head. “It’s something different. Just, trust me, I don’t believe the heresy.”
Mo didn’t believe him. “I would try and drag you back, but I would kill us both trying, and I’m tired. What am I to tell your parents?”
“If I don’t come back, that I’m sorry. I tried to do the right thing.”
Timas pulled back. Mo stood there in his giant groundsuit, framed by a pair of boulders, as Timas turned around and continued on.
He hadn’t paid attention to the ticking on his chest for a long period, too focused on getting around boulders and moving forward. When the alarm buzzed Timas jumped, and then laughed nervous ly to himself.
It didn’t feel like he was killing himself, he thought, as he continued walking toward the storm. But he certainly felt all alone in the dim, brown light.
CHAPTER FOURTY-ONE
Timas pushed on, reminding himself to keep checking the radio compass. It would be easy to lose track of time, or start wandering in the wrong direction.
He couldn’t tell how many miles he’d walked, or how deep he was into the storm, but it felt like the winds weren’t getting worse.
The steady rattle of debris against his groundsuit became a comfortable static. The limited visibility kept him focused on just getting from where he was to the next spot just ahead.
Muscle spasms hit. Knots of fire building deep in the tissue, trying to force him to stop. Signs of heat exhaustion. But if he stopped, he was just sitting still breathing, not getting closer to the goal.
Timas dealt with the dizziness and exhaustion by taking it one heavy step at a time. He blinked sweat out of his eyes, and scrunched them tight when the world around him skewed and spun.
It was a spell of dizziness that saved his life. Staggering his way up a slope he paused, swallowing several times to try and stop the nausea. Timas collapsed to his knees. The world spun and washed past him, and his vision blurred as he unsteadily moved forward.
When he looked back up he realized that he had crawled his way to the edge of a lip.
He inched forward and looked down over a precipice that didn’t seem to end. A valley.
This was a landscape he had no map for. He couldn’t cross that.
But what if the aliens were on the other side?
Timas followed the edge for several feet, looking for a way down. He didn’t find one. A strong gust of wind blew a hail of pebbles at him. Timas held his hands up as they struck, trying to ward them off, and as he did so he fell over.
He heard the crunch from the rear. A radiator fin, or several. He had minutes to live before he cooked to death like Cen had.
Already he felt the edges of the suit warming up. Timas blinked tears from his eyes. He tried to move, but the effort was beyond him, the heat had beaten him.
There was nowhere to go, nothing more he could do but lie down and wait for the heat to take him.
CHAPTER FOURTY-TWO
For a brief second, Timas thought he was hallucinating. Humans, not aliens, in sleek, form-fitting suits had surrounded him.
They picked him up and dragged him quickly along with them. He knew it wasn’t a hallucination when his fingers burned against the suit’s gloves as they jostled him. That was too real.
Timas wanted to be grateful, but he was too confused. He hadn’t found aliens. But he had found people?
The figures dragged Timas into an airlock with a boulder that rolled aside as its door. Inside, once pressure was reduced to normal, heat normal, they skinned out of their suits, leaving just their gloves on to manhandle Timas’s cherry-red and smoking groundsuit.
They cracked his helmet and ripped it off. Timas tasted brutal, cold air through his cracked lips.
“Stupid, stupid child,” the nearest figure snapped. It looked like a woman with her black, silky hair cut short but with long bangs. They tickled Timas under the nose as she leaned forward. “Look at the light.”
A bright light made Timas flinch.
“Okay, he’s responsive. Let’s get the rest of the suit off him and some liquids in him.”
They had Timas out of the suit and on a stretcher. He felt the prick of a needle, and when he opened his eyes saw a bag of fluid swinging over him.
The woman saw him looking around. “You are a very lucky person.”
Timas coughed. “You’re people . . . .”
“Yes.” A tight-lipped grin. “And I even have a name. Claire. And you were you looking for gods? We get those, wandering out in the storm from your cities, convinced they’ll find that.”
“No.” Timas waited as she dabbed ointment on his lips. “I’m here to talk to the aliens. It’s important.”
“It’s always important.” Claire rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and put a patch on his shoulder.
“I was sent by the city because they know there are aliens hiding down here. I was sent to warn them that the invasion coming this way is coming for the aliens. It’s an attack, and you’re included. I’m not here for gods. After I warn you, I need to go back, to help defend the city.”
Claire looked up at the others. “Well, that’s a variant on the usual.” She used a cloth to wipe his face off. “But you don’t get to leave Hulbach. You’re here for good, now.”
“What do you mean?” Timas struggled to sit up. He wore his single white undersuit, and they’d left the timer around his neck, still ticking away.
“This is a place of refuge. A hideout. The stragglers we rescue from the surface stay, or choose to have this entire experience wiped from their mind before being returned. We’re not cruel, but we do have our own survival to worry about.”
Timas shook his head. “But I need to talk to the aliens, they need to know what is happening.”
They moved him into a wheelchair as the doors opened. Timas had been lying in an elevator descending from the airlock. They wheeled Timas out into an antechamber with seven different corridors, all well lit, leading off like spokes from the elevator.
The two men that had helped pull Timas in remained behind at the elevator, like guards.
As the corridor continued it widened, and a strong, sweet breeze rushed down it. The sound of rustl
ing reached Timas. The corridor ended in doors. Trees blocked his view from there.
The doors opened to let them through and under a large pair of palms that framed them. A set of gardens, deep underground?
Timas leaned back and looked far, far up to the top of a giant cavern, hundreds of feet over his head. Artificial lights blazed down at him.
He looked back, and as far as he could see were trees, grounds, and domed buildings. The walls all had windows and balconies looked out into this massive space. He felt like a speck. Cultivated gardens, park, roads: an entire world had been injected into this massive two-mile-long bubble under Chilo’s surface.
At the center of the cavern hung a giant, round surface, surrounded by gently flashing lights.
“Welcome to Hulbach Cavern. Our refuge, our home. Right now, humans are rampaging across worlds. Sure, some hold to their home worlds and maintain their dominance, but humanity attempts to consume everything else, like a plague of locusts.”
Timas twisted and looked back at Claire. “I’m sorry?” He wasn’t sure what a locust was.
“Even now, in the air, the destruction continues that your species so loves. It’s what we came here to avoid. Before humanity there was a three-hundred-year peace under the Benevolent Satrapy. But your species is still hungry, and thinks real estate and expansion equals success. We lost our wariness, our edge and distrust, and we paid the price.”
Timas looked at her. “You keep saying ‘we.’ You don’t consider yourself human?”
“You came looking for aliens. Here we are.” She had walked out in front of him. Now she turned and smiled.
“I don’t understand.”
“This is a drone, I am talking through it to you. I am the Satrap Amminapses.”
Timas stared at her. “You don’t completely take over another’s mind, you pop in and out as you please?”
“Some find it a compelling arrangement with the payment I offer. My examination of you is done. I am also done speaking with you.”
It was like the Swarm, in many ways. Claire’s face relaxed, and then reanimated. She shook her hair and smiled at him.
“Are you okay?” she asked. Then blinked. “I gave over, didn’t I? Well, it looks like you got your audience with aliens after all.”
She walked around and started pushing him toward a nearby building, curvy and low to the ground. “You still need some tests and further checking over.”
“But what about the coming invasion? Your entire cavern is at risk!”
“The Satrap has decided not to interfere with this new war among the outsiders. Any war puts us at risk, but revealing ourselves? No, that is not going to happen. No matter how savage they all get out there.” Even though she wasn’t being used by the Satrap, she still sounded like she didn’t consider herself human.
“You sit while danger gets ready to rain on you,” Timas muttered.
“We have a way out.” She pointed off over the treetops toward the center of the cavern at the top half of a circular void, encased in girders and beacons. “That’s how we got here. A wormhole. Right now it’s tied on the other side to an asteroid in the middle of a nowhere system.”
“So you can just leave anytime? Why are you still here?”
“We can’t use it right now. The wormhole is buried in the asteroid to hide it.”
The path turned, hiding the wormhole behind trees. They approached a wrought-iron arch. Under it stood what looked like a large bird with razored spikes instead of feathers. It had flattened arms, with sharp, pointed hands holding a small ball. It sped toward him and ducked aside at the last second.
Timas didn’t have time to turn to keep the alien in view, but the creature’s flattened face slid over his right shoulder, the neck snaking around so it could look directly at Timas, face to face, an inch away. It smelled sharp, like a cheese gone bad.
Eyes the size of his fist regarded him without blinking.
Timas froze, looked over at Claire. “What is it? What does it want?”
“It’s a Nesaru.”
“And my name is Skizzit. I wanted nothing more than to tag you.” The words came from a band on the alien’s neck. A speaker. It was just like when Katerina had spoken to him without moving her lips. It pinched his shoulder, and then put the ball away in a red purse that hung near its breast.
“What was that for?”
“A tag. It will let me know where you are in Hulbach.” Skizzit moved back to stand next to Claire.
“Skizzit is part of Hulbach security,” she explained.
“I rolled the dice and was unlucky enough to get this assignment.” It looked over at a set of bushes and trilled loudly. “Now that that’s done, you’ll rest and then get acquinted with Hulbach rules and regulations so you don’t do anything stupid. We’ll also need to find you a job.”
“You don’t understand, I’m here to warn you about what’s coming.” Timas pulled out the vial of blood Pepper gave him back on Yatapek. “I have proof that this is not just a human issue. The attacker is alien, it’s an infection that gets transmitted by bite and blood. It creates mindless bodies. And it’s coming for your cavern.”
Claire’s eyes rolled back up into her head, and she staggered, then leaped back. She looked at Skizzit. “Was the human not unarmed and vaccinated upon arrival?”
The alien waved its arms. “It had no weapons. It received shots on the elevator down. Apparently the humans bringing it down did not bother to properly search it.” It stomped the ground. Anger? Or frustration? Timas didn’t know which.
Amminapses, or so Timas assumed, turned back to Timas. “Are you threatening us, bringing that bioweapon in here?”
“I’m not threatening.” Timas glanced around, hearing bodies moving through the grass to surround them. Ten, then twenty, then thirty Nesaru slowly formed a circle around them. Suddenly those barbed quills didn’t look so harmless. Even more worrisome were the black guns they had aimed at him. “We think you’re the target of the Swarm. And we’re caught in it as it comes here.”
The inhabited Claire held out her hand. “Let’s see it.”
Timas hesitated for a second, and then gave it to her.
It was bagged and handed off to a human who had appeared in a clear plastic protective suit. Then Claire bent over and started pushing him quickly along. “You’ve upset the Satrap.”
“You have only been here minutes,” Skizzit said. “Already you are an incredible inconvenience.”
The circle melted away.
“What’s going on?” Timas asked.
“Quarantine. And thanks to your little stunt, I’m going to be stuck in there with you. So is Skizzit.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re a fool, antagonizing the Satrap. You need to know your place.” Claire led them into the nearest building, where the staff hustled them, from a respectful distance, into a small room with chairs. “It’s dangerous to challenge it. It is the Satrap, you understand?”
When the door locked, it did so with a solid thud.
Timas wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
CHAPTER FOURTY-THREE
Momotzli returned in the cage, alone. Pepper watched Itotia crumple, losing that stiff posture as Heutzin ran to her side and helped her stay on her feet.
Pepper helped unsuit Momotzli. He leaned in close when the sweaty, exhausted teenager stumbled on his own toward a bench. “What happened?”
Momotzli had his forehead in his arms, panting. “He took me toward the storm. And then at the turn-back point, he made me leave him and return on my own. He kept going.”
Itotia left with Heutzin helping her along. Momotzli’s chastened-looking father dragged him away.
They left Pepper alone on the docks facing the empty and still-steaming-hot groundsuit.
Heading into the depths of the storm made sense.
Risking his life for his city, that was admirable.
Pepper rubbed his face, tired. Beneath the weariness was a small t
rickle of anger.
Tough universe.
Yet, Pepper thought as he turned away from the groundsuit, he wanted that death to balance out somehow. And the only person that could guarantee to remember to tip the scales for Timas was him. Itotia, Ollin, everything would be gone soon. Yatapek couldn’t resist the Swarm.
Even with him helping.
Pepper checked the power level. He had two and a half hours of constant use left.
It was time to get to that escape bubble and leave Yatapek. Then he would return and destroy the Swarm from above.
CHAPTER FOURTY-FOUR
This is all so typically human.” Skizzit stood in a corner of the room, while Claire folded her arms and sat in a chair with an annoyed look on her face.
“What do you mean?” Timas asked.
The birdlike Nesaru waved a quilled hand at him. “Your kind. Barging in, causing drama. No finesse. No civilization.”
“My kind? We didn’t create the threat that’s coming,” Timas snapped back.
“Well was it Nesaru who did it? I doubt it. Besides, who’s creating chaos right now?” Skizzit shook its quills and ducked its face in them, cleaning them with its beak. “Your wars are spilling over again. Your violence and darker impulses come to light once more.”
“It was the Satrapy and your kind that enslaved humanity. Would we be fighting so much if we hadn’t been reduced to so little? You took us off the mother planet and scattered us across the Forty-Eight worlds. And you did worse.” He thought back to Van’s scars and behavior.
Skizzit puffed out its quills, doubling in size. “Your own kind sold you to the stars from your mother planet happily. Your kind starved in the millions on its own planet. We developed your other planets. We brought technology and civilization. Without us, you would never have gotten this far. You should be grateful to us for the lives you now live.”
“You took advantage of us, exploited us, and now you pay for your sins.” Aliens everywhere ran to hide from humans now. That made Timas feel good.
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