The Touchstone Trilogy

by Andrea K Höst

  "Commencing," Kajal replied, fingertips barely brushing my shoulder. He looked tense, and also a little hyped, but at least not interested in showing me his opinion of strays. There were eight Setari with us who had strong Ice talents, and they had two telekinetics assigned to cart about the ones who couldn't manage that themselves. They'd barely taken off before the ship moved into a glide which forced me to change my stance to keep upright.

  The second attack squad began enhancing, while Grif murmured to me: "Call a stop to the enhancements immediately if it starts to overwhelm you." The look he gave Par and Sonn underlined the order, and then he signalled for the surrounding Setari to take off and said: "Clear."

  Kajal's voice came over the interface: "Attack begins."

  The transport was at the wrong angle for me to see the start of the ice, but when Selkie said: "Detonate," I couldn't miss the reaction of the massive. The top of it bulged upward – in one or two places fragments of white stone actually flying through it – but to my disappointment it hadn't ended up with a huge hole in the middle. For a moment it didn't react at all, and then it started scrunching backward like a big flat caterPillar.

  "Nise, use rubble to try and knock it upward," Grif ordered. "Kanato, take your group forward and target the edge to gauge effect."

  Five Setari dropped down, setting the retreating edge of the thing blazing. But it was like destroying only the fringy bits of a carpet, and the thing showed no sign of lifting as they wanted. It was so huge.

  By this time the transport had circled around to the rear and I could see the work of the ice. I was really surprised at how much they'd made so quickly, like a mini-glacier rising out of the water. I found out later that while Ice talents can produce it apparently out of nothing, the amount of water in the air makes a huge difference, and having an ocean to draw on is as good as being enhanced. The ice was cracking, though, as the thing tried to pull free. It couldn't immediately manage it, and the folds began to gather and bunch up. The Ice group took advantage of that, catching the folds in the growing trap.

  "Attack wherever it's slightly raised," Grif said, and the main attack split to either side, blasting into the folds. The Ice group began to return to the transport in pairs to enhance, darting back quickly to continue to reinforce the glacier as parts of it shattered and crumbled. The transport moved around to the side as the massive changed tack, hunching down and trying to seal all access to its underside.

  The nearest group took the opportunity to enhance, and then Ruuel, who was floating somewhere underneath the ship, said: "It's preparing an offensive attack. Gain distance and circle to the front, all forces."

  Brilliant blue lines were gathering on the massive's exposed back. My attention was distracted by Sonn, telling me to kneel for balance and grip the edge of the hatch as the transport put on a sudden burst of speed, causing more than a few of the returning Setari to stagger and follow Sonn's lead.

  The massive was folding itself vertically, still trying to keep its sides sealed. I'm not sure it could even tell if the Setari had retreated as it began to produce such an intensity of power it burned little vein-like afterimages into everything I was seeing.

  "After the blast, it intends to leap forward," Ruuel said. "On my signal, go low, strafe the underside with everything you have. Ice, you will have the barest chance to retrap it."

  The massive's brightness climaxed in a tremendous arcing halo, a display of lightning to put anything the Setari could do to shame. The wind brought the scent of ozone so strong it felt like my nose was being scoured, and I had my eyes squeezed shut when Ruuel said: "Go."

  I haven't watched the mission report showing them fly underneath the thing as it leaped forward. The whole idea of it makes me nervous, because it could so easily have crushed them. I stayed down, resting back on my heels, and didn't even let myself look using the transport's view until I heard the faint relieved sound Sonn made.

  Caught a second time, with its underside blasted from below, the massive reared up perilously and then flipped backward, trying to jerk itself free. If it had managed it in the first lunge it would probably have escaped, but instead it exposed itself in the worst way to further layers of ice, was pinned wrong-side out and unprotected from unrelenting pounding. The fliers carefully manoeuvred in to join the Setari, blasting away with their weapons.

  The thing was just so damn large, and didn't have any kind of head or heart they could concentrate on. It took ten full minutes of relentless hammering before it stopped trying to break free. The last enhancement cycle, I really started to feel it, a painful effort every time anyone so much as brushed against me and they weren't even halfway through the cycle before I looked up at Sonn and didn't have to say anything at all. I think she'd been about to call it anyway, immediately saying: "Devlin's at her limit. Returning below."

  Par levitated me down, then he and Sonn were called away to support the escort-chasing group, who were close to being overwhelmed by something like fifty swoops, but had held off reporting numbers until the massive was beyond escape. Everyone who wasn't in a state of collapse went off to help them. One of our entourage of greysuits made me drink something which tasted like caramel and hot milk, and I even felt her touch as effort and protested a little incoherently before passing out in the seat next to where Mori was already sleeping.

  Zzz.

  I woke on a very flat, hard bed in a nook hidden by a curtain. A girl of about eleven was standing clutching the corner of the bed by my foot, staring at me. She was totally Wednesday Addams: tight black braids, big forehead, huge eyes. It took me a minute of staring back at her to decide I wasn't hallucinating.

  "Are you just going to lie there?" she asked, when I didn't do anything.

  "Are you just going to stand there?" I asked. It was so disorienting, to be on the ship, and then somewhere else with someone I'd never seen before, and no sense of transition at all.

  "No. But I can't interview you while you're lying down. It would look bad."

  I blinked at the impatient tone, and rubbed sleep out of my eyes. "I under impression that random junior reporters not able record my image."

  "I can log your outline." Scornful now. "Hurry and sit up. I've a lot of questions and hardly any time."

  "I tell you what," I said, propping myself on one elbow. "I trade you question for question. You first: where is here?"

  "Timesa. My turn. What do you miss most about your home world?"

  "My family."

  "Other than your family."

  "That a different question." I smiled at her provokingly, shifting to prop my back against the wall while looking up Timesa in the encyclopaedia. It was another of the little food-processing settlements scattered through the Array. The interface told me it was two kasse (about five hours) since the massive battle. "We're waiting out that storm here?"

  "Uhuh. What, other than your family, do you miss most about your home world?"

  "My friends," I said, grinned at the look on her face, and added: "And the food, the music, the stories. I miss a lot some of the things I was reading, because I don't get to find out how end."

  "What's the biggest difference between the people on your world and the people here?"

  I considered pointing out that it was my turn, but instead glanced at the team lists to see who was awake. Most everyone was out of it though, here and back at base. First Squad was back from their rotation, but asleep. I had some emails from them waiting for me. "Tare less diverse than Earth," I said, after thinking about it. "Everyone here speak same language; Earth has hundreds. On Earth, more variety in the way people look. Many more different customs." And more misunderstandings and wars as a result. "But no psychic people."

  Ruuel was awake, but I'm being very strict with myself about contacting him, so settled on Nils instead. I sent him a text: "Need to be saved from precocious little girl."

  "You get to work with the Setari, right? What talents do you have?"

  "Talent for getting heada
ches, mainly. Do you have any talents?"

  Nils, sounding like he was laughing, opened a channel and said: "Glad to see you're awake. What's this dire peril?"

  "Levitation," the girl said tightly, though I couldn't tell if she was annoyed at me for being facetious or for the question. She tilted her head, and I realised that like me she was having a conversation with someone else at the same time – people feeding her questions, judging from her expression as she asked: "Which Setari is the best looking?"

  "Third Squad captain," I said without hesitation, adding: "Being able to fly one of best talents. Would like to have that one. Is that how you got in here?" To Nils I said: "Intrepid girl reporter woke me up for exclusive interview. Being very indiscreet."

  "How much of The Hidden War episode about you was correct?" the girl asked, ignoring my question. "And did you like it?"

  "There was a lot of made-up stuff," I said. "But some of it was real, like that bit where I was nearly stood on by something in the middle of the night. Don't think I could ever really enjoy watching that. At the time was very upset because someone had taken the things which had happened to me and turned into entertainment, just so they could make money." I thought about adding a stalwart defence of Fourth Squad, but was spared having to decide if that was a good idea by the faint shushing noise of a door.

  The girl glanced around, then crossed her arms and waited defiantly as the curtain pulled back to reveal both Nils and Ruuel. "You're interrupting," she snapped, totally unfazed by six-foot-something, black-suited, uber-dangerous psychics.

  Nils laughed, sounding surprised but unbothered. "I'm often told I have no sense of timing," he said easily. He gestured with his hand and the girl rose a couple of feet off the ground. "But I am irresistible," he added, and walked off with her, ignoring her outraged demand to be put down.

  Highly amused, I looked at Ruuel and realised he was annoyed, his eyes narrowed and his mouth very flat. It's such a rare thing for him to show anything but his captain expression that I felt sick with dismay, and said in an embarrassingly plaintive tone: "Would have felt silly sound alert on little girl."

  "You've forgotten the lesson of the cat," he said, but something had shifted in his eyes and he suddenly seemed more his usual self.

  "Ghost kind of a mixed lesson," I pointed out, trying not to show how relieved I was. "And if she'd wanted to hurt me, she could have done it before waking me up and asking me questions. Is everyone all right? I fell asleep before fight was over."

  "No fatalities." He stepped back as one of our attendant greysuits showed up. "Food down the hall when you're done."

  The greysuit – one from Gorra who didn't usually have a chance to test his theories on the stray – was really interested in whether being pushed to my enhancing limits had had any effect on me, but frustrated that they didn't have any of their fancier scanning equipment on hand. I was distracted by the rest of what proved to be Timesa's small medical facility, which was overcrowded with seven injured Setari, and me in for observation. I was surrounded by little alcoves with curtains and wanted to see if any of my friends were behind them, but the only person I could see enough of was Hasen from Eighth, her nanosuit partially withdrawn and the exposed skin of her shoulder covered with liquid bandage.

  After locating the nearest bathroom first, I found Nils, and Endaran from Eleventh, waiting in a largish conference room along with another greysuit, two greensuits, and the bluesuit in charge off in one corner talking to someone I assumed was local to the island. I gave them all a vague and general smile before helping myself to the little buffet laid out on the table, sitting down next to Endaran. I was seriously starving.

  While I ate, Nils tried to tease me about my interview, which had taken about two minutes to reach worldwide transmission. The girl, Palan Leoda, had levitated up the shaft of something like a dumb-waiter to win a bet that she could get in to talk to me. The other children in her class had promptly begun feeding her questions, and now half the planet was dissecting my answers. Everyone seems to have leapt to the conclusion that Nils is the Third Squad captain and that I'm desperately in love with him. He does have a very sexy voice.

  I was still pretty tired, and went back to the medical facility to sleep again until Mori woke me when it was time to go. Most everyone was awake by then (another kasse along). All but the injured had been sleeping on the transports. Ironically they'd brought me into the facility so I could be under closer medical observation, but there's no way Wednesday could have reached me if they'd just left me with everyone else.

  A few of the injured would be returning all the way to the main KOTIS facility using transports rather than through the spaces from Gorra. Eighth Squad came out worst from the clean-up of the swoops. Bryze had a broken leg and Hasen was speared by a beak almost through her shoulder.

  The trip to Gorra wasn't very relaxing, since it had stopped raining but was still extremely windy, and occasionally the engines of the transport rose to an audible whine, or we would gain or drop altitude alarmingly. I hate to imagine how bad it must have been to ground us altogether. Everyone was quiet and grim, probably, like me, reviewing the post-storm images of the little island with the massive half falling off what little remained of the buildings underneath. It had been treating the buildings like barnacles, breaking them open and picking out the flesh inside, then chipping down further for more. Add a few explosives on to that and there wasn't much remaining of the processing facility.

  Rather than look at it, I said to Mori: "Realised another reason why Setari hunt Ionoth in spaces instead of in real-space. Much better weather."

  "Absolutely," she said. "We would have trouble surviving the battleground, let alone the battle. Does Earth ever face storms this bad?"

  I had no idea how to measure them comparatively, and shrugged. "Think it's more frequency that's the issue. Earth has destructive storms, but we don't have them every week all over the planet."

  "An extreme rather than the normal state. What about Earth compared to Muina?"

  "Hard to say – only ever saw a bit of rain there. No really violent storms. Think it must be a lot more geologically stable, though, since your language doesn't even have words for things like volcanos or tsunamis."

  "Volcanos?" Par repeated curiously.

  "When burning liquid rock is pushed up to the surface, out of the planet's core."

  Par gave me a very uncertain look, and Mori frowned. Nils, behind me again, leaned forward to ask: "Are you being serious?"

  The short remainder of the flight back to Gorra involved my feeble explanations of tectonic plates, earthquakes, tsunamis, hot springs, bubbling mud pools, pyroclastic clouds, Pompeii, and the prospect of California falling into the ocean. They weren't quite sure whether to believe me, and now have a distortedly dramatic view of what life on Earth is like. I've been describing Earth to people for months, but there's still so much I've never even mentioned, or have given only half-assed explanations for. It's like the story of the group of blind people trying to get an image of an elephant by touch.

  I think I also helped distract them from the recent fight which, though it didn't involve any Setari deaths, was not by any means easy and had as its prelude the death of nearly two hundred people. It's the second massive to emerge on Tare in a short few years, and the number of escort Ionoth was by far the most they've ever seen. Without me along it would have taken them a lot longer to kill the massive, and with the storm and swoops factored in, any number of little islands might have been crunched before they'd finished it off. For all the killing they'd done, for all they could now go to Muina, they were no further along to finding a solution to the tearing of the spaces. And the problem was getting worse.

  We walked rather than ran back from Gorra to the main KOTIS facility on Konna, with the usual brisk care Fourth Squad takes to everything. When we finally arrived, Ruuel gave everyone a nod and said: "Free time until the rotations have been rearranged. Devlin, report to medical."

 
I expected that, so didn't pull a face at him, just made sure to detour back to my rooms for a shower and to grab my diary first. The greysuits love to add to their collection of stray's brain scans. And I have nothing in my calendar any more, and aren't assigned to anything.

  I think I figured out why Ruuel was so annoyed with me, though. I was assigned to Fourth Squad, at least nominally, yet reported Wednesday Addams to Nils instead of my captain-of-the-moment. And Fourth Squad's had enough grief lately about their fictional treatment of me. Any hint that I preferred not to be working with them was pretty much guaranteed to get me a black mark in Ruuel's books.

  Can't risk showing any hint of how much I want to be around Ruuel. Can't let anyone think I don't want to be around Ruuel. Can't win.

  Friday, May 30

  Long Term

  I spent a lot of today on the roof. It was windy and overcast, but nothing dramatic. After I escaped from medical yesterday, Ketzaren and Alay took me for a 'jog' around the stairs training course (in other words, we started out jogging, and then there was a lot of walking involved while I caught my breath), and later First Squad had me for dinner again.

  We had a pretty frank discussion about the increasing number of Ionoth. Just as Taarel had said, all squads are reporting increased populations in the known spaces, and larger numbers of roamers. More new gates are tearing, too. It's not like Tare's going to be overwhelmed next week or anything, but First didn't hide that the long-term situation wasn't looking great.

  Zee put it most bluntly. "Even if we do succeed in gaining access to Kalasa, there's no guarantee that there are explanations there. No guarantee that there is any kind of solution. And the timeframe is beginning tighten."

  Nor did they pretend that experiments with me trying to get someone into Kalasa weren't likely to happen sooner rather than later, though they haven't been scheduled yet. I'm glad I've been preparing myself.