“Some damage?” Ayma grips the control stick tightly. “It could wipe out our electronics entirely.”
“I’ll go down and check on things in the engine room before we hit any turbulence,” Velkan says.
“I’ll come with you.” I unbuckle my harness. “It’s about time I got to see the inner workings of the Syndicate’s top secret project.”
Velkan takes no shortcuts as he inspects the aft structure of the orbiter and appraises the condition of the solid rocket boosters and other equipment. I listen, fascinated, as he demonstrates how the liquid-fuel cryogenic rocket engines work.
“Fuel is drawn from the external tank,” he explains. “The engines are used for propulsion and the solid rocket boosters provide the additional thrust required.”
“A very different machine to the Zebulux,” I say, in an awed tone.
Velkan smiles at me. He sets down the wrench he is holding and pulls me toward him. “It wasn’t all bad on the Zebulux. I remember some special moments.”
I laugh. “Refresh my mem—”
His soft, full lips are on mine before I even finish my sentence. My mind blanks out as the sweet sensation of his kiss awakens my tingling senses, and then I’m floating up and far away from the reality of what we are about to undertake on Mhakerta.
We remain locked in a long overdue embrace until a sudden jolt startles us apart.
“You’d better finish up those checks,” I say, quirking a grin. “We must be heading into the storm zone. No more goofing off.”
“I love my job,” Velkan replies, winking at me as he reaches for the wrench. “Especially my new assistant.”
The craft shudders several more times as he finishes inspecting and testing the equipment. When he is done putting away the tools, we close up the engine room and make our way back upstairs.
The tension in the control room is palpable. Ayma and Phin sit erect in their seats, barking out readings and instrument adjustments to each other in rapid fire succession as the stealth fighter winds through the Netherscape on a trajectory toward Mhakerta. Velkan and I fall silent as we strap ourselves back into our seats and stare through the viewing window at the myriad hazards lighting up our path ahead.
Ayma and Phin continue to trade reports on the growing number of solar flares—only partially buffered by the magnetosphere—and the resulting particle streams they are forced to navigate around. I don’t understand half of what they are saying, but the effects of the storm on the functioning of the ship send a message, loud and clear. The lights flicker briefly and I grip the arms of my chair, hoping the ship’s electronics don’t fail entirely.
Minutes tick by, elongating into eternity, but Ayma powers resolutely onward. I slacken my fingers from the armrest and Velkan’s warm hand slips over mine. “Even if we die in an electrically-charged solar storm,” he whispers. “At least we’ll be making fireworks together.”
I can’t help but burst out laughing.
Ayma throws a harried glance over her shoulder. “What’s so funny about being fried to a crispy particle?”
“Nothing,” I say, tears streaming down my face. “Stress relief, that’s all.”
“Well, while you’ve been relieving your stress, or whatever it was you two were doing downstairs, I managed to locate a valley between the mountains in an uninhabited area of Mhakerta where we can land,” Ayma says. “There’s a small river flowing through it so we’ll have a water supply, maybe even fish if we’re lucky.”
“Fantastic,” I reply, feeling my cheeks flush when I catch Velkan’s eye and recall the soft fullness of his lips on mine.
“Buckle up tight,” Phin says. “We’ll be entering Mhakerta’s airspace roughly ten minutes from now.”
I shoot upright in my chair, his words electrifying my spine. “So soon?”
“The stealth fighter can move faster than any other ship in the galaxy. That was never in question,” Phin replies. “The real test is whether the cloaking technology will hold.”
“This is it,” I mouth to Velkan.
He squeezes my hand gently in response, his face grave. “However this ends, I wouldn’t trade a minute of the time I’ve spent with you.”
Phin leans over the console and gives Ayma a tight nod, before flicking a switch. He adjusts a couple of controls and studies a screen on his left. “So far, so good,” he says quietly, as if even the sound of his voice could potentially throw off the unstable cloaking mechanism.
“Preparing to penetrate Mhakerta’s airspace,” Ayma says in a clipped tone.
The words sends a tingle of anticipation and dread through my bones. These could be our last moments together, but there’s no sense in wasting energy on that dark thought. Instead, I focus on what we’ll need to accomplish if we succeed.
Getting through the heavily-defended airspace is only the first step. If we aren’t blown out of the sky, we still have to land without being detected. After that, Ayma has to try and hack into the neural core of Preeminence to find the answers to the questions we have come here with.
There’s also the practical question of food, which I’ve no doubt Buir would have already taken care of if she were here. It will be my job to hunt whatever is out there for us to survive on for as many days as it takes to penetrate Preeminence. I only hope the wildlife is nothing like what we encountered on Razaran.
The ship decelerates and the descent through Mhakerta’s airspace begins; agonizingly slow and traumatizing. With every passing second, I’m more convinced than ever that a missile is about to blow us out of the sky. I tell myself I won’t feel anything if that happens, but it does little to reassure me. More than anything, I want to evade death. I have so much left to live for, and so much I still want to do. If I die here, Parthelon will most certainly be elected to rule Cwelt after my father, and the thought fills me with dread. I grit my teeth, trying to drown out the repeated clip in my head where a missile pulverizes the stealth fighter and sends me into oblivion.
The waiting is especially tortuous because there is nothing I can do, and no enemy to shoot at. Our lives are in Ayma’s hands now. She’s a disciplined pilot; calm, self-assured and focused. I’m thankful for it, and the incredible skill she exhibits. Small wonder that the Syndicate sought her out for their top secret program. If she codes and hacks half as well as she flies, Aristozonex will become an unstoppable military force. The thought of the Syndicate having that much power is not as reassuring as it should be, but I can’t think about that now.
All of a sudden, the stealth fighter levels out and my eyes widen at the first sight of land in front of us. A glistening body of water snakes to our left, and jagged mountain peaks straddle a long, narrow valley. Before I can begin to process what I’m seeing, we bump down with a jolt and roll to a stop a few hundred feet along the floor of the valley. Ayma kills the stealth fighter’s engines and we sit staring through the viewing window in shocked disbelief. We are alive, concealed, untouched by rocket fire, undetected by Preeminence’s sophisticated air defense system.
We are on Mhakerta.
11
I can scarcely breathe as I look around in awe at the towering landscape. Cwelt’s craggy outcroppings are like anthills in comparison. The deep glacial valley Ayma has brought us down in is little more than a tapered belt of scrubland stretched between two thickly forested, snow-capped mountain ranges. How she ever managed to land the craft without clipping the dense mesh of trees clustered along the foothills is truly a testament to her prowess as a pilot.
To the left of the stealth fighter, the river glitters like a writhing silver serpent reflecting the lofty peaks in the morning sun. A beautiful, untamed place that speaks to my soul in some incalculable way. Tears spring to my eyes; tears of joy at such beauty, tears of relief that we made it, tears of frustration at what we missed out on all these years—I’m not entirely sure what I’m experiencing. So many raw emotions are tumbling around inside as I catch my first glimpses of my homeland. Somehow being here just
emphasizes all the more how much we lost out on. This stunning panorama of peaceful magnificence is our rightful origin.
Our birth parents are here somewhere, trapped by the iron will of Preeminence, or perhaps they are already at rest beneath Mhakerta’s soil and we’re too late to save them. Both options fill me with dread, and the uncertainty weighs on my shoulders despite the tidings of peace the beauty around me conveys.
“Ready?” Velkan glances around the cockpit at us, a look of steely determination on his face.
We nod, but no one speaks. How can we really be ready when we don’t know what awaits us? Ayma unbuckles her harness and reaches for the OcuLens as she slides out of the pilot’s seat. Her ivory face is bloodless, glistening with a thin layer of sweat that betrays the enormous stress she was under bringing us through the deadly airspace. We could never have accomplished this mission without her, and I’m incredibly proud of her.
“I knew you’d make yourself useful sooner or later,” I say, winking at her.
She gives a weak grin in return. “Getting us here was the easy part. Now, the real work begins.”
“None of it will be easy,” I reply. “We knew that going in.”
“What our parents did for us wasn’t easy either,” Phin adds. “I hope I get to meet them and thank them for their bravery.” His brow furrows as he studies the terrain beyond the cockpit.
I can’t imagine what it was like for him growing up as an orphan. I was lucky I had parents who loved me all these years. I hope we haven’t come too late for Phin to experience that too.
Velkan hands him a uniform jacket from the supply closet to replace the one he left on Namuto. “This looks about your size.”
I point to a coil of wire at the back of the closet. “Bring that too, we may be able to make a fishing line.”
“And this time we’re taking MicroComms with us.” Ayma hands out a tiny metal stud to each of us. “Slip it inside your ear. It will suction itself to your eardrum. If we get separated, we can use them to communicate with anyone who gets back to the ship.”
I slip the cold metal stud inside my ear and wince when it adheres to my skin with a powerful grip.
“Zero, gamma is the code to activate your MicroComms if you need to communicate, and sigma, zero will shut them down,” Ayma adds.
I mouth both codes over to myself multiple times to make sure I have them memorized.
Velkan opens the cargo door and we walk down the ramp and step into a biting breeze that pricks my face like a myriad of icy needles. Soft flurries of snow swirl down from the remaining clumps lodged in the pine trees that line the valley, twinkling like miniature shooting stars in the sunshine. My teeth begin to chatter, but my jumpsuit rapidly adjusts and seconds later, a welcome warmth floods my limbs.
As beautiful as the melting snow is, it adds another element of uncertainty to our mission. Hunting and fishing will be sparse at best in these conditions. We won’t even be able to resort to surviving on berries from the bushes I spot nestled below the pines. Everything is still frozen, shut down for the season. At least we have the stealth fighter to retreat to for shelter at night when the temperature drops. I know only too well the struggles of starting a campfire in the dark and cold and wind. Cwelt can be an inhospitable place for the ill-prepared.
Ayma darts an uncertain glance around. “I wanted an uninhabited landing spot, but I didn’t think it would be quite this remote. We’re a long way from civilization. How will we find anything to eat here?”
“That’s my specialty, Aristo-girl.” I give her arm a reassuring squeeze. “I know a thing or two about hunting and trapping, not to mention spear fishing.”
Her brow wrinkles. “Even a city girl knows that animals hibernate. And if there are any mountain lakes, they’re bound to be frozen.”
“There’s always ice fishing,” I reply with forced gusto. “Anyway, the snow on the low-lying ground has already melted so the lakes may not be frozen anymore.”
“Let’s look around and get our bearings and figure out what we’ve got to work with before we draw any conclusions,” Velkan suggests.
“I’ll leave the cloaking technology in place for now,” Phin says. “Just in case we’re not alone here.”
I nod toward the tree line. “Whatever food source we find, it’s going to be in there. Even if we only manage to snag something small, we can make a stew tonight.”
We hike at a gradual incline for a mile or two through densely packed pines that offer some respite from the wind, but make it difficult to see more than a few feet ahead, which leaves us vulnerable to a surprise attack.
“Visibility’s decreasing as we go higher.” I exchange a knowing look with Phin as I pull up alongside him and discreetly point to some large animal tracks. Wordlessly, he slips to the rear, one hand on his weapon. The last thing we need is to be surprised by a predator like the cat we encountered on Razaran.
Our breathing grows more labored the higher we climb, and I’m beginning to doubt we’ll find anything to eat, but I’m determined to find a spot from which I can view the entire valley. I want to find out exactly where we landed, and what lies beyond the mountains. I push on as the others fall behind, confident in Phin’s skills to root out trouble before it hits.
Less than a half hour later I find what I’m looking for—an extensive granite ledge that protrudes out over the mountainside, offering a spectacular view of the whole length of the valley, the winding river cutting switchbacks through it, and the soaring peaks that circle us like a stone fortress.
Velkan joins me on the ledge. “Breathtaking.” His tone is one of reverence. He turns to me and smiles. “Our birth planet is a beautiful place.”
“This part is,” I reply. “Untouched by Preeminence. But we’re the only ones who get to see it anymore.”
Velkan’s face darkens. “Once Mhakerta is free of Preeminence, her people will climb these mountains again as they did in the past.”
Behind us, I notice Phin scouring the underbrush, vigilant as ever as he sweeps the area. Those tracks I spotted further down the mountain have made him wary. They weren’t fresh, but whatever animal made them would be a formidable opponent, and Phin’s not taking any chances.
Ayma comes up alongside Velkan and me and squints through the OcuLens. “This vista is spectacular. So much better than anything bioengineered on Aristozonex.” She pans slowly from left to right, and then stiffens. Just a subtle reflex, but I can tell immediately that she has spotted something.
“What is it?” I ask, forcing my voice not to crack with fear. I anxiously scan through the trees, images of bovibeest and wild cats flashing to mind.
“A wooden cabin, just beyond the pass between this mountain and the next.” Ayma’s voice is low and urgent.
My heart begins to race. This was supposed to be an uninhabited area. Could Preeminence have an outpost here that the stealth fighter didn’t pick up on? “Do you see anyone outside the cabin?”
She shakes her head. “It’s barely visible through the forest. I caught a glint of glass in the sun.”
Phin walks over to us, his eyes alert and roving the landscape like a radar. “Pan all around the cabin perimeter in case there are lookouts stationed nearby.”
Ayma studies the hillside through the OcuLens for several more minutes. “Nothing. No movement at all. The OcuLens isn’t giving me any thermal readings of any life forms either.”
Phin folds his thick arms across his chest. “One of us needs to check it out and make sure it’s abandoned. There may be some old supplies we can use, or maps of the area.”
Velkan looks around questioningly. “I can hike across, or we can all go.”
I shrug. “Can’t be more than a couple miles from here. I’m up for it. It’s safer if we stick together.” I don’t mention the animal tracks I spotted, but I feel Phin’s eyes on me and I know he’s thinking what I’m thinking.
Ayma pulls at her ponytail nervously, still clutching the OcuLens in her other h
and. “I’ll do whatever the rest of you decide—just so long as we’re back at the stealth fighter before nightfall.” A cautious expression darkens her eyes as she steals a glance into the woods. “I’m not sleeping out here tonight. There could be a very good reason why no one’s around, and it might have nothing to do with Preeminence.”
12
The first part of the hike is downhill and relatively easy, but the climb up from the pass to the cabin proves more challenging than we’d estimated. We didn’t bring any water with us, so we resort to sucking on mouthfuls of snow still clinging to the branches of trees to stay hydrated as we begin to sweat from the exertion. My jumpsuit quickly adjusts, sending a welcome cooling over my limbs.
The trail is steep and rocky, with loose shale that skids out from under our feet where the snow has melted away, and more than once Phin’s sturdy grip is the only thing that stops Ayma from hurtling to her death. This is not an environment she has any experience with, and I’m beginning to regret not leaving her behind at the ship. If we’re stuck out here tonight, she won’t sleep a wink, and I doubt she’ll let us sleep either.
I flinch at every rock that ricochets down the mountain, the sound magnifying our presence to anyone or anything out there. Each time we halt and listen for whistles or shouts or any other indication that a lookout has spotted us. Or worse, a predator. But only the caw of the occasional bird overhead breaks the wintry silence.
Eventually, the trail levels out again and we round a bend and come on a small mountain lake, glittering like a diamond secreted away from prying eyes. My heart jolts at the pristine beauty of it, but also at the possibilities it offers.
“It isn’t frozen,” I say to the others excitedly. “We can rig up some lines from that wire we brought and try and catch some fish for tonight.”
“We might find some discarded poles in the hut,” Velkan suggests. “It would save us valuable time trying to make some.”
Girl of Stone (The Expulsion Project Book 2) Page 9
