It was my turn to frown. "What do you mean, lost? Forgotten?" He nodded. "Oh, they're not forgotten. Just illegal."
"Seekers?" he asked.
I nodded. "Who else? But they're just enforcing the laws. Colberrans passed those laws centuries ago, distrustful of anyone who Codes or Scripts or whatever you call it."
"We call it Altering."
"That's as appropriate as the other two," I muttered, refocusing my attention on him. "Regardless, you're cheating if you're using that."
"You don't sound so sure of yourself now," he said, pulling the staff up and pointing it at me. "Either stick with your conviction or don't speak up."
I glared at him and batted at the end of the staff near my face—missing it, needless to say.
"You're Scripting," I whispered.
He shrugged. "So what?"
"Altering the rules of reality makes it an unfair fight," I muttered, frowning and crossing my arms across my chest.
"Stop pouting like a spoiled brat," he hissed. "Fights aren't fair." He stepped toward me, staff held in both hands before him. "They're never fair. They're often hopelessly unfair." He stopped a pace from me, steely black orbs holding mine hostage. "Get used to it."
With that, he attacked, staff spinning out before him. I don't recall much of the next chron or so. I do know my staff never moved that day. The next day, however, the training changed. I'm not sure if he thought the training had been unfair or felt guilty or what. Now, Scripting became a part of the training. He didn't ask how I'd learned. That would come later. For now, he seemed content just to make me practice it. I think he was testing my limits. There were many. Through trial and error, I found that my largest challenge lay in making things happen when nothing was going on. At first, when Suyef gave me an instruction to follow, concentrating solely on doing just that made my mind waver, leading to failure. If, on the other hand, I allowed my mind to wander a bit, to engage in other activities, success followed more often. Suyef seemed to notice this as well. He incorporated it into my training. Defending yourself while trying to Script has its own challenges, but it did help me by moving me into something that was clearly a strength: multitasking. The challenge remained the same: get to my staff. I tried every trick possible to make that thing appear in my hand. He countered every move. It was annoying, frustrating, and embarrassing. I'm not at all sure what he hoped I would learn. The only thing that was certain was that I never got close to picking up that blasted staff.
#
"I take it then this isn't the first time you ever Scripted?" I asked, raising a hand to stop Quentin.
We sat in the living area, a couple of nutrient and hydration packs between us on the table.
"Of course not," Quentin retorted, a chuckle shaking his body. "I thought that was clear in my story."
"So, when did you learn?"
He held up a finger, shifting it back and forth at me. "Nah, ah, ah. You mustn't look before you've leapt."
I arched an eyebrow at him. He raised his in return, smiling in that goofy way he did when he thought he'd said something clever.
"You do realize, Quentin, you've got it backwards," I pointed out.
He shrugged. "Whatever. Either way, you're getting ahead of yourself. We'll get to that soon enough."
I rolled my eyes and returned to my notes. Quentin burst out laughing and jumped up.
"I'm tired of sitting here. Onward and upward!"
With that, we climbed up out of the crevice and seated ourselves just under the fold of land that concealed this place. Quentin never moved far from the structure, creeping out like a small child stepping foot outside for the first time. The world was a dangerous place, he told me in hushed tones. All kinds of dangers.
I pondered again the depths this man had fallen to. As he sat there, eyes darting around, hands grabbing at stones, dropping them, and grabbing more, I couldn't help but wonder where the man had gone that had stood toe to toe with a Questioner to defend a complete stranger. Seeing the timid, broken, hurting man squatting before me, I began to wonder if he would ever return.
#
This training continued for multiple sessions every day. We would spend at least a chron every morning training. If I wanted any time to work on learning the Colberran coding language, it had to be done at other times, either by waking up earlier or sneaking in bits of work along the way. I became very adept at riding a Seeker mount one handed while using my padd device in the other hand.
Finally, after several days of moving like this, Suyef brought us to a control station near the edge of the shell. The water pipe ended at that station but, unlike most endpoints, this station had no settlement. Well, it had no settlement with people living in it. All we found was an abandoned one, the buildings clearly vacated long ago. Most had fallen apart, save for the Ancient control station. That looked as pristine as the day it had been built, or so records tell us. Suyef approached the settlement with caution, leaving me alone in the desert to guard the mounts. I stole a few blessed moments undistracted to pull out my padd and do some more drills with the language. My confidence was growing at that point; I could manage my way around the Colberran network, but the padd was as limited in its functionality as it was mobile. I'd quickly grown frustrated with it when trying to do searches of the network files. It had been this limitation that convinced Suyef we needed to get to an actual control station. He'd been quite convinced the process could be muddled through on the device until I let him try to use the interface to find anything. I'm not sure if he grew impatient with the device or my inept way of explaining the coding to him. Either way, it worked. Thus, I found myself sitting watch over our speeder mounts as he snuck in to the abandoned settlement ahead to reconnoiter. I did my best to keep watch, if for no other reason than to catch him coming back. I'm not sure why I bothered. Boredom took over soon after he left, leading me to pull out my padd to do some drills. Before long, he was standing there in front of me, arms across his chest and a frown on his face. I shrugged and we went to the control station.
As all signs had indicated, the settlement and control station had long been abandoned. Making quick use of my newly learned language, I made my way to the main floor's access station. The Ancients lacked for creative design when they built these things, as a quick scan upward indicated the same floor plan as every other control station. I took to the panel, but Suyef stopped me.
"Are you certain you'll remain undetected?" he asked.
I shrugged. "As best as I can. I'll only be accessing information pertinent to this station. Staying local. It should go undetected."
He nodded and disappeared above. He'd already checked the place out, so my guess is he wanted to leave me be.
I got straight to work and found my labor over the coding had paid off. Soon, records in the control station flowed across the screen. I tried to stay local so as to avoid alerting someone to our intrusion before we had an idea of what we were doing. Still, I needed to start making some progress or Suyef might call this whole thing off. He was a bit antsy to get to the point of our trip there or go home and be done with me. So, I opened a search program and began to set some parameters.
There the next problem surfaced. What to look for. I tried basic data pulls, compiling lists of information on the water project and the events of a few decades ago during the water race. Most of that data, however, was useless. Public knowledge that revealed very little. I browsed various data nodes, looking for other peoples' work on the subject, but found little original thought on the incident. I pondered the problem for a moment, staring at the screen when a thought occurred to me.
"Suyef!"
"Is someone coming?" he hissed, and I heard him shift to come back down.
"No, no. Nothing like that," I assured him. "You said this place has no food supplies, yes?"
"They haven't been restocked in several months at the least. Did your records say this, too?"
I shrugged, despite the fact he couldn't see me. "Didn'
t check that." I brought up the station records. "I don't see anything recording a visit for several cycles at least. In fact, there aren't any records of a patrol even checking on this station in over a decade." I shook my head and looked up to the ceiling. "Did you check the water supply?" Silence greeted me. "That's a no."
I toggled over to check the water system, sliding my seat to the left as the system appeared on screen. It took mere moments to find what I was looking for. To be sure, I moved to another window and accessed information on the settlement. The data confirmed my suspicions.
"Suyef, you'd better come see this."
The Nomad made his way down the ramp and came to stand over my shoulder. He took in the system information at my indication.
"According to this, the settlement was abandoned over fifteen cycles ago. The reason? The Ancient-made water system stopped sending them water."
Suyef looked down at me. "I thought that wasn't possible."
I nodded. "Me, too. This system does one thing and never stops doing it. For some reason, fifteen cycles ago the system stopped sending water."
"Meaning the people here had no choice."
"No choice at all," I whispered, nodding once. "Leave or run out of water."
We remained staring at the screen for a moment, then Suyef spoke.
"Do we know why it stopped working?" the Nomad asked.
I shook my head and got to work, pulling everything possible on the settlement. I combed through personal files and any available records. Suyef vanished at some point, leaving the station muttering something about checking out the settlement. Time blazed past amidst all the information popping up. Late into core-night, something very odd surfaced. As I searched through the data, some of it altered. The files’ data showed it was being accessed. Someone else was looking at the same information. It was impossible to tell if it was a monitor or just someone else curious about the same thing. What was clear was that someone had accessed the same files open on my screen. Double-checking that the files were local ones only, I closed them out. Something caught my eye. I opened a station log and began reading. There, buried among all the data, lay the answer.
I pushed myself up and called for Suyef, forgetting he'd left. I rushed out the door and called to him. The settlement looked very strange in the core-night. Shadows played off the angled walls of fallen buildings, casting gloom over everything they touched. Stepping away from the station to yell again, my call was interrupted by someone grabbing my hand. Suyef spun me around, finger over his mouth, nodding back toward the control station. Once there, he waited until the door slid shut, then glared at me.
"Do you always go barging out into the night calling out for all the world like you are alone?" he hissed.
I looked around at the empty facility. "We are alone. This place hasn't been used or lived in for over a decade."
He leaned close to me. "That doesn't mean we are alone."
I glanced back at the door, expecting someone to come in that very instant. "Who's out there?"
He shrugged. "I'm not sure. I'd only just discovered them when you came out." He nodded toward the far wall of the control station. "Whoever they are, they're approaching from the east." I stared at him. "That's where we just came from."
I nodded. "Sorry, I'm kind of turned around with all the backtracking we've been doing."
He glared at me. "The mountains to the north should have told you all you need."
"I couldn't remember which way we were facing when we came in," I said, shrugging.
"What did you find out that had you all up and yelling?"
I leaned close to him, my voice dropping to a whisper. "Whatever it was that happened, the water stopped coming on purpose."
He cocked his head to one side, eyebrows furrowed. "Sabotage?"
I shrugged. "Maybe. But it was intentional, and someone here figured it out. Come look." I pointed him to the screen and read off the pertinent parts.
He stared at the screen, reading. "So, someone altered the flow of water into this station? Why?"
"That isn't clear. But someone here found the change worthy enough to report it and he was told to stay silent about it. He didn't like that but didn't say anything. Just recorded this log for someone to find."
"Someone like you?"
I shrugged, shaking my head. "Or anyone who was looking." Another file jumped to the forefront at a finger tap. "There's more. Look at the date on the first log entry made referencing a drop in the water."
"I thought you said fifteen cycles ago."
I shook my head. "That's when the water cut off completely. Look at the date." I pointed to the column containing the data. "It's the cycle after the missions to the water shield."
"So, within a cycle of their failed attempt to get to the water," he began.
"They didn't fail. The ships made it and one came back with water in its holds," I corrected him, then motioned for him to continue.
"Within a cycle of that day, the water system here began to malfunction," he finished, glaring at me. "Is this connected to the network problems the elder mentioned?"
"Could be. It's too early to tell. All we know is that this settlement began running out of water within a cycle of the water shield missions. Someone here noticed and began making a record of it. About seven cycles after my birth, this settlement completely ran out of water and was abandoned." I paused, wondering if I should tell him the next part. "There's one more thing worth mentioning. Someone else is looking."
Suyef's head spun to stare at me. "What do you mean?"
"I'm not entirely sure what it means, but someone accessed the same files I was looking at. Not all of them, just some." I pointed at the log. "Including that one."
Chapter 8 - Conspiracies
"You said were only accessing local files?"
I nodded at Suyef. "They were local, but you know that anything saved on the network is fully accessible by any access point." I pointed at the panel dominating the room before us. "There isn't a local storage drive of any kind. It's not how this computer works."
"I'm well aware of how this thing is designed," he said. "But you assured me what you were doing wouldn't catch anyone's attention."
I shook my head. "No, I said I was fairly certain it would be undetected. Seeing as this place has been abandoned, it's safe to assume no one is paying attention to it anymore."
Suyef closed his eyes and his head dropped toward the ground. "Or, because it's abandoned, they're watching it."
I nodded in agreement. "That's a possibility. They could have any of the information from this station flagged." His head shot up, eyes and mouth opening, but I held up a hand to forestall him. "It's a possibility, but that's not what happened here." I pointed at the screen. "Whoever was snooping around here appears just to have accessed a temporary copy of the file. See"—I tapped a specific data point on the screen—"that's the main file I was looking at. A local version appeared here temporarily when it was opened. What happened was another temporary version appeared, then vanished." I stepped back and spread my hands out to either side. "That could just be the system backing up the file..."
"Or someone else requesting the same file," he finished. His eyebrows furrowed in thought. "The odds are not good, you realize?"
I chuckled at him. "About as good that your incoming somebody is the one accessing the files."
He stood silent for a moment, then nodded at the panel. "Can you hide what you've done here?"
My eyebrows went up while I pondered his question. "Mostly. Anyone who knows what they're looking for can find the-"
"Can you hide your tracks well enough?" he interrupted me. I nodded. "Do it. We need to leave before whoever it is gets here."
I reached out to the panel, tapped a few places, pulled out my padd and held it near the panel, watching the files transfer. Suyef eyed the device warily.
"Just want to have the files on hand. Don't worry," I assured him. "They can't trace it that well."
&
nbsp; Those words assured me about as much as they did him. Regardless, he said nothing, and soon we left. Operating the mounts in stealth mode meant turning off all piloting aids for fear they could be tracked and moving a lot slower as a result. We made our way south toward the shell's edge, then cut to the west and moved ever so carefully the rest of the night. Suyef never told me how he was tracking whoever had appeared on the horizon and who had come to the settlement, but I didn't feel like asking him about it at the time. The day had dragged on, and the buzz from my discovery had long since worn off. By the time he called a halt halfway through the next day, I fell asleep almost as soon as I hit the ground. I'm not sure how long I slept, but when I awoke, core-night had fallen. Suyef grimaced as he woke me.
"No practice," he whispered. "We move."
"Did you sleep?" I asked.
He shook his head and said no more. We mounted, scarfing nutrient and water packs as we went. I figured we'd at least lost whoever had come to the abandoned settlement, as Suyef permitted piloting aids. My sensors showed nothing within range of us as we went. Suyef led us on a much more direct route than normal, and soon we came to a halt on a long ridge. To the left, the ridge ended abruptly in the south in a sharp drop off at the edge. To the right, the Colberran Mountains dominated the north. Before us lay another settlement, and a different pipeline filled the skyline leading to it.
"Abandoned," Suyef said, his sharp eyes taking it in.
We piloted our mounts down to the edge of the buildings. Dust blew up in the air behind us as we slowed to a halt. The wind, for once, settled. Suyef stopped, pointing at the structures ahead.
"All the doors," he whispered.
They all lay on the ground, ripped from their hinges. Shutters lay strewn on the ground, but all the buildings stood, their cement walls holding them up. The buildings looked old, their corners rounded with erosion. A quick peek inside one building showed the entire place had been ransacked at some point, the furniture removed. We made our way through the silent settlement, every building missing doors and shutters.
Rise: Paths (Future Worlds Book 2) Page 7
