“Elo,” she replies, jabbing a finger at her throat.
“Pretty name,” I say, smiling at her.
She turns away and fixes her gaze forward, dismissing any further conversation.
“Ever heard of Namuto?” I ask Ayma.
She shakes her head. “I’ll pull it up on the charts once we’re out of here.”
She powers the engines and a steady thrumming fills the cabin. Phin mans the weaponry console.
Relief surges through me when the stealth fighter lifts off and soars upward and away from the body poacher’s insidious base.
A moment later, a resounding boom shakes the hull of the ship.
“Direct hit.” Phin gives a satisfied grin. “Easy when it’s not a moving target.”
Elo clings to the back of her chair, whimpering, her face buried in the seat. I lay a hand on her hard shoulder, all muscle from years of tanning leathery hides.
“It’s okay,” I say. “We’re safe now. Ayma blew up their ships.”
Elo peers out at me from under her arm and blinks hesitantly. “Namuto?”
“Yes, we’re going to Namuto—it’s the least we can do for you. You saved our lives back there.” I pucker my forehead. “Although … I wish you could have done it some other way.”
She stares at me, a puzzled look on her face.
I turn from her curious stare. To her, the guard was nothing more than a vicious animal that needed to be put down—like every other body poacher.
“I’ve located Namuto,” Phin calls back to us. “According to the charts, it’s a terrestrial planet in the Netherscape, a primordial mass of grassy plains known for its vast herds of six-toed bovibeest. It says here the inhabitants trade hides and meat, and decorative baskets woven from grasses, that’s about it. Oh, and it has one of the most toxic plants in the galaxy—the firespear. Loss of memory and vision within minutes of ingesting it, the brain is ravaged by delusions, and death normally occurs within the hour.” Phin grunts. “Probably a welcome relief.”
Velkan turns to Elo. “How did the body poachers catch you?”
A flicker of fear passes over her tanned face. She raises her hands and spreads them out in front of her. “A big net fell from their ship.”
I recoil at the thought of the terrified people of a primitive planet like Namuto struggling in a giant net, caught up to the sky like a helpless catch of body parts for trade, defenseless against the poachers’ schemes. My thoughts flit to my birth parents trapped on Mhakerta. I’m not sure if man or machine is the more gruesome master, but one thing I do know. Left to compound their power unchecked, both are capable of unimaginable evil.
“I’ll deploy the rocket boosters,” Ayma says. “That should put us in Namuto in about four hours.”
I sink back in my seat and close my eyes. I only hope Namuto offers some respite after everything we’ve gone through on Razaran. I’ve burned through every ounce of adrenalin in my system.
Dawn is rising by the time Namuto comes into view on the screen on the console. “Doesn’t look like they have a docking station,” Phin says. “We’ll have to put down on the plains.”
“I need to run a full diagnostic once we land,” Velkan says. “We can’t take off for Mhakerta until we can be sure the ship is reliable.”
Ayma takes us into a sweeping downward arc and decelerates in a smooth approach to Namuto. She employs the aerodynamic braking and glides to a halt over the bumpy terrain.
I stare through the viewing window in awe. Waving plains of beige-colored grassy plants stretch in every direction as far as the eye can see. Apart from the occasional bird circling overhead, surveying the ground beneath for anything that could serve as a meal, I can’t see any signs of life, in any form.
Elo jumps up and bangs impatiently on the door leading out of the control room. I grin to myself and tap the panel on her right to activate the door. She darts through it and heads straight to the cargo bay.
“Let’s hope that’s a good indication we’re about to get a warm welcome here,” I remark to the others as they undo their harnesses.
As a precaution, Phin insists that we arm ourselves before we disembark. After encountering the wild cat on Razaran, I can appreciate the wisdom in his words. We don’t know what our reception here will be or whether or not bovibeest are dangerous.
We open up the cargo bay and step outside. The fresh, brisk breeze is a welcome change from the dense air that hung like a wet blanket over the jungle on Razaran. Although the terrain here is unfamiliar, and I don’t recognize the species of bird circling overhead, I don’t feel any fear. The open plains can’t hide much from us, so if anything comes our way we will see it in plenty of time.
Elo pulls a curved ivory-colored whistle from her pocket and blows three piercing notes through it. The sound carries over the breeze, but unless someone is hiding in relatively close proximity, no one is going to pick up on it. But someone does. Three fainter notes respond, and then three more, farther away this time. I strain to peer through the grasses. They must have a chain of whistlers planted along the plains.
Still, the tanner woman doesn’t smile, but she seems satisfied with the response to her signal. She wades purposefully into the grass and indicates to us to accompany her.
Velkan secures the cargo door on our ship and we follow the tanner’s trail through the long grass. I close my eyes several times, enjoying the warmth of a strong sun and the caress of the breeze as I walk. After we’ve gone a mile or two, voices drift toward us. Elo picks up the pace and before long we find ourselves face-to-face with her people. Their faces are as expressionless as hers, noses pierced with decorative bone, nails long, thick and split for tanning. They don’t even show surprise at seeing Elo again, although they must have seen the raid and realized the body poachers captured her.
Their leader stands in their midst, a diminutive man with leathered skin stretched over prominent cheekbones. His matted hair is entwined in a nest above his head and a scarlet tassel dangles from it, presumably marking his position of authority. A pointed scrub beard juts from his chin and moves like a puppet when he mutters something to the men with him. He is dressed in a long, woven red robe with wide sleeves that sweep down over his hands. I cast an admiring eye over the spear in his right hand—an impressive length for such a small man, indicating his prowess as a hunter. I don’t splay my hand, although my fingers itch to give my customary greeting. This time I will follow the cues I am given.
Elo steps toward the leader and begins to talk in a rapid staccato tone, a seamless tirade of guttural sounds that make me think she is arguing with him, even though he hasn’t said a word to her yet. He hears her out and then stamps his spear on the ground twice before turning on his heel. The group follows him back into the grasses.
I throw Velkan a quizzical look. It wasn’t exactly a welcoming gesture, but it’s impossible to tell if we’ve been dismissed, or ordered off their planet, or something in between.
Elo walks back to us and nods. “Come.”
I look at the others and shrug. At the very least, maybe we’ll get a meal out of the deal for returning Elo.
We move through the waving grasses at a gentle jog to keep pace with the group until we reach a cluster of conical tents made from animal skins—most likely bovibeest. Surrounding the tents are rows of drying racks, animal hides stretched tight over them. Women work diligently in front of the racks scraping the black hair from hides and dipping them in large tubs of some kind of salmon-colored liquid.
The leader plants his spear into the dirt and then sits down cross-legged in the center of the tents. The tribespeople follow suit and gather round him in a circle. Out of the corner of my eye I spot a group of women carrying pots of food in our direction. Velkan and I exchange relieved looks. The smell of meat wafts our way and my stomach grumbles in response.
The women serve the food to us, handing out ladles and bowls, keeping their eyes averted the entire time despite my attempts to engage them. I
inhale the mouth-watering aroma of the stew in my wooden bowl and then take a bite of the succulent meat. “Delicious.” I moan with pleasure. “This must be bovibeest,” I say to Velkan.
He smacks his lips together approvingly. “No wonder traders come all the way to the edge of the Netherscape to purchase it.”
When we have eaten our fill, the tanners take out some sort of clay pipes and light them. A peculiar odor fills the air. They puff quietly, their eyes becoming glassy. Their leader studies us intently all the while. I’m thankful they don’t offer to share the pipes around, but I also wonder if it’s significant. Maybe they haven’t fully accepted us. Finally, one of the tanners points directly at us and says something.
Almost immediately a heated discussion breaks out. Everyone gesticulates wildly, chattering like monkeys trying to be heard above each other, puffing furiously in between words. I look around bewildered, but Phin, Velkan, and Ayma are as confused as I am. Elo studies the ground in front of her, a deep frown on her brow. Whatever the argument is about, she’s clearly not happy.
The leader snaps his fingers and a young serving woman runs off, and returns a few minutes later with a wooden drinking bowl, brimming with a dark liquid. She carries it carefully to the leader and places it on the ground in front of him. He waves his hands over it like he’s blessing it, chanting all the while.
I take the opportunity to lean over to Elo and whisper. “What’s going on, hand washing ceremony?”
She turns to me, her face devoid of any emotion, and points directly at Phin. “They don’t trust him.”
Of course! They’re scared of the Syndicate uniform.
I frown. “So, is this some kind of ritual, blessing a drink and sharing it, or what?”
Elo blinks. I’m not sure if I confused her, or if she’s struggling to explain the custom. Before she can answer, the leader hands the bowl back to the serving woman. She carries it across the circle and places it directly in front of Phin.
“You drink the firespear. No die, your heart good.”
10
Firespear!
With alarming clarity I recall Phin’s words: loss of memory and vision, the brain ravaged by delusions. My throat tightens until I can scarcely breathe. If Phin drinks that liquid, he’ll be dead within the hour.
My heart thumps so hard against my ribs it hurts. I need to reassure the leader that Phin is not a threat. My thoughts flash back to Boshtee and his people, and the cultural misunderstanding that led to Meldus’s death. I can’t let it happen all over again.
“Elo!” I whisper, grabbing her by the sleeve. “We have to stop this! Tell them Phin intends them no harm. We rescued you and brought you home! Surely that means something.”
Elo juts out her bottom lip. “They don’t trust the Syndicate. He cannot refuse the test.”
I shudder. A test with a one hundred percent mortality rate. But I can tell by the look on Elo’s face that she can’t intervene. Judging by everything I’ve witnessed so far, I suspect she holds little sway here as a woman, which might explain why no one showed any excitement to see her returned safely. I rack my brains for some way to prove to the leader that he can trust us, and especially Phin.
“Give me your jacket.” I hold my hand out to Phin.
He looks at me perplexed, but shrugs it off and passes it to me anyway. I get up and walk slowly across the circle and lay the jacket on the ground in front of the leader. He eyes it suspiciously before fingering the supple, black leather. He leans forward and sniffs at it, pausing in between breaths as if trying to determine what animal it was made from.
“Take it,” I urge him. “It’s for you.”
He lifts it and slides his arms into it, then stands and examines it more closely. A hint of a smile tugs at his lips, the first I have seen on any of the tanners’ faces. When he’s done admiring the jacket, he looks intently across at Phin. He leans down and taps his soft, kidskin shoes and then glances at me questioningly. His eyes glisten, but whether from greed, or the effects of the pipe, or a mixture of both, it’s hard to say. I nod to show that I understand what he’s asking and then call across to Phin, “He wants your boots, too.”
Phin looks mildly irritated, but he doesn’t hesitate to divest himself of the black leather knee-high Syndicate boots and pass them around the circle. I try to keep a straight face as the leader hobbles back and forth in the oversized boots, his heels slipping with each step. The other tanners exchange dubious glances, in between puffs, the mood suddenly lighter, if not quite jovial.
Just when I think the crisis has been averted, the leader stops parading around and jabs a finger at Phin. “Drink!” he commands.
Everyone in the circle stiffens. I suck in an icy breath, waiting for Phin to refuse, or to tip the drink onto the ground, or offer the leader something else to add to his growing collection of Syndicate soldier paraphernalia. My pulse hammers at breakneck speed. If Phin pulls out his gun, there will be deaths on both sides, but he may have no other option. My fingers close discreetly over the hilt of my knife. We live and die as a team. I will fight to the end with him.
Hesitantly, Phin picks up the bowl and studies the contents as though willing himself to drink it, but I know he’s only playing for time. I’m scared they might hold his head back and force it down his throat if we don’t act. My lips part to shout to him to dump it out, but a heavy rumbling catches my attention. I lift my head in time to witness a cloud of dust as a herd of wild animals thunders by the encampment. At the last second, two huge black beasts on the edge of the herd peel away and begin pounding a path on powerful forequarters toward a young tanner woman carrying a child on her hip as she inspects the drying hides.
The beasts’ enormous, boxlike heads are dominated by a fierce pair of curved horns and framed by shaggy, black hair that almost reaches their knees. Bovibeest!
Before anyone in the disoriented group can react, I snatch up the leader’s spear and throw it with every ounce of strength and determination I can muster. It whistles through the air, true and flawless in flight, as I knew it would the moment I set eyes on it, piercing the jugular vein in the neck of the nearest bovibeest. It roars in pain, jerking its head sideways as it thunders to the ground in a flurry of dust. Almost immediately, a shot rings out and the second bovibeest crumples, hooves flailing as it slides to a stop in the dirt only a few feet from the young woman and the petrified child clinging to her like a limpet. I turn my head in time to see Phin calmly holstering his gun.
For a long moment no one in the circle speaks or moves. They watch the young woman sink to her knees and rock back and forth clutching the child to her chest. No one moves to assist her or offer her any comfort.
I glance at the leader, respectfully waiting on him to make the first move. He trudges up to me and stares long and hard into my eyes. He throws only a cursory glance in Phin’s direction, then tightens the black leather Syndicate coat around him and trudges off to a nearby tent, still encased in the ridiculous boots that go halfway up his thighs.
Before I have a chance to exhale, Elo’s sharp nails dig into my arm. “Leave, now,” she urges me. “Before he changes his mind.”
I wish I could take her with us too, but she wanted to come back to Namuto—the only way of life she knows. I give her a grateful nod. “Take good care of yourself.”
She presses her lips together in her customary fashion, her expression unreadable.
I nod to Velkan and Ayma, and then prod Phin who’s standing trancelike, staring down at the firespear at his feet. “Time to go,” I say.
He kicks the bowl over and watches the poisonous contents drain into the dirt. One by one the tanners drop their gaze, ashamed they ever participated in such a deadly game with us.
Before anyone in the group has second thoughts about letting us depart in peace, I plunge into the swaying grasses that cover the plain and begin blazing a trail back to the stealth fighter.
As soon as we are out of sight of the animal skin tents, we
break into a run, thrashing our way through the grass, eager to be on our way before the tribespeople come down off their high and decide to pursue us after all. We let out a spontaneous cheer at the welcome sight of the stealth fighter.
“Let’s get this ship back in the air and on course to Mhakerta,” Ayma says, punching the entry code into the key panel.
“I haven’t had a chance to run a full stationary diagnostic, yet,” Velkan says.
“We don’t have that luxury anymore.” Phin pulls an extra pair of boots out of the uniform closet. “Do what you can underway.”
Our mood is solemn once we are strapped into position for takeoff. Ready or not, it’s time to fulfill the mission we set out on from Aristozonex, which will likely prove more dangerous than bloodsuckers, wild cats, and firespear combined.
The stealth fighter accelerates into a climb and I sink back against my seat, exhausted from the adrenalin surge that is slowly leaking from my veins. I would like nothing more than to curl up and sleep for days, but we’re already behind schedule and we need to make up for lost time. If the Fleet Commander arrives back on Aristozonex to discover both the stealth fighter and his daughter missing, there’s no telling what will happen—to Buir and Ghil, to us, to my people on Cwelt.
“You won’t be sleeping much on the way to Mhakerta,” Ayma calls back to Velkan and me. “Looks like we’re going to hit some stormy weather with all the solar activity I’m picking up on the radars.”
“How bad is it?” I ask.
“A few burning meteors, as well as strong gusts of solar wind and charged particles striking the magnetic fields around the planets toward the edge of the Netherscape,” Phin says, studying the screen in front of him. “It will be tough to avoid all the chaos. Once we’re out of the Netherscape, we should be clear.”
“Clear of solar storms,” I say, grimly. “But heading into the biggest storm of all if Preeminence detects us.”
“The cloaking technology is working for now,” Phin replies. “But there’s still a chance we’ll incur some damage flying through the storms that may affect it.”
Girl of Stone (The Expulsion Project Book 2) Page 8
