by Ginger Booth
“I guess I meant most important to Mahina, not necessarily the ship,” Aurora mused. “Who would be missed the most?”
Kassidy shrugged. “Clay is the richest. His son is powerful back home. Most of us are misfits. Only a few even have families to care if we didn’t return.”
Oddly, this answer seemed to satisfy Aurora. “And you?” she followed up. “Are you any more tempted to become a doctor?”
“No. Yes.” Kassidy laughed at herself. “I have the aptitude. I was reminded of that recently. I wouldn’t put it past my parents to have gene-crafted me that way. But I’m not done being wild yet. Here I am on Denali! The trip of a lifetime! I can’t wait to go into the city. When you leave, you’ll take me with you, and show me around, won’t you?”
“And your special friend?” Aurora inquired. “Sass has Clay, Ben has Cope. Who does Kassidy have?”
Kassidy pounced on this. “Did Ben and Cope really get it together? Lovers?”
“Yes.” Aurora looked puzzled. “Wasn’t this known?”
Kassidy waggled a hand so-so. “Long overdue, in my opinion. Eli and I are the odd ones out,” she confessed. “And I am dying to get laid! Show me the best spots? How to connect like the locals?”
Aurora purred approval. “Of course!”
And Kassidy set to woo her new best friend.
A polite knock preceded Sass sticking her head into Ben and Copeland’s new digs. “Hey, cap,” Ben greeted her. The engineer continued fastening the set of screws fixing a wall-mounted twin bunk above his full-sized bed. Ben held the hardware in place for him.
“Welcome to officer country!” Sass encouraged. “Long overdue.”
Ben replied, “The back of the bus was roomy until it got crowded.”
“I wanted to ask you two a favor,” the captain crooned. “I hope you’ll resume your study hall sessions in the dining room. I know, you’ve got your new room, and need time for nesting. But you set a wonderful example when you work in the galley. Encourage others. Make yourselves available. I think you’ll find no one aft of this room knocks on our doors if they have a question. They comm us.”
Cope nodded. Ben voiced the response. “Sure, cap. I mean, I normally study when everyone else is asleep, but.” The third officer covered the graveyard watch.
“So what’s this meeting about?” Cope inquired. Sass stopped in just a few minutes before they were due in the office.
“Debrief, what you learned in Waterfalls,” Sass replied. “Now the bio-lock is available, Abel and Jules will take their turn in town. Abel needs to sell our cargo, and figure out what we’ll take back.” She grimaced. “I’ve agreed to accompany Jules to the ag domes. I mean, I’m fascinated. But I expected Eli to study their agriculture, and Jules to delight in the markets. Instead Eli’s off cultivating his inner animal, I’m checking out the greenhouses, and Abel’s on his own.”
“I need Ben’s help here,” Cope cautioned. “How much longer for this meet-and-greet phase? Nearly 7 months sounded like a long time. But everything takes too long. The weeks mount up. We can’t accomplish much here once summer hits.”
“Understood. That’s what we’ll strategize. Job one was a bio-lock against the bakkra – well done. Now you can concentrate on the fuel problems. My next goal is to visit Dr. Yang in Neptune as soon as practical. You don’t want to come along for that? I’m sure the sea floor habitat is fascinating.”
“I’d love to go!” Ben volunteered. “But Cope…”
“No way in hell,” his partner confirmed.
Ben understood. Certain things incited Cope to panic attacks. The man tried to maintain an unflappable tough veneer. But the very idea of exaggerated air pressure and breathing helium, buried beneath a bazillion metric tons of monster-infested waters, aggravated every psychic fracture in his makeup.
“That’s fine,” Sass soothed. “Fuel is your priority. And whatever our little spaceport needs.”
She pointed casually to the fold-down bunk frame. “I am of course curious whether you’ve graduated to a romantic couple. But too well mannered to ask.”
Cope snorted. “Appreciate that, cap.”
Ben elbowed him. “No secrets survive the Thrive.”
He joked, but his heart sank. Was Cope really planning to pretend they weren’t an item? Or worse, was their intimacy in Waterfalls just a fling?
10
Sass leaned forward from her second row seat in the shuttle, peering into the unfamiliar greenish night vision display on the front windows. “Steady your altitude, sergeant,” she reminded him. “Every vertical meter counts.”
“Respect, captain, but not really appreciating the back-seat driver,” Wilder returned. “We’re fine.”
“There!” their hunter-guide Zan interrupted. “The armor road cutting. See it?”
Studying the map display around Wilder’s bulky triceps, Sass was as perplexed as the pilot as to what exactly Zan had spotted. To reach Neptune, their plan was to over-fly the road. But they needed to join this highway in the next steep valley, as its spur to Waterfalls connected via a narrow tunnel through a mountain. Starting from the intersection, they agreed to burn forest from above with their lasers. The impenetrable jungle healed itself closed over the months of dark winter. The remainder of Zan’s expedition to the coast were to follow in a couple tanks, and rebuild the road’s sonic defenses along the way.
Sass prayed that was enough of a lifeline to cover the shuttle’s trip back to the Thrive. It mattered a very great deal whether Wilder could coax flagging batteries back to this point, or needed rescue from deep in the mountain forests. In the latter case, she trusted Zan would get her crewman back alive. But she needed her shuttle, too.
Five weeks, she moaned internally. The arctic winter was already passing. But Aden’s mild advice on her first day proved true. It really had taken them this long to acclimate, gear up, and mount an expedition, just to visit the closest surviving city.
Granted, this road didn’t really lead to Neptune. Its dome was undersea. All this effort was to reach its staging wharf.
“Not that screen,” Zan replied in exasperation. He toggled the display to visualize sound, and a white beacon blazed forth. “Guns free.”
Like Aurora, Zan had taken a turn in-dwelling on the Thrive. Unlike Aurora, Zan spent his time boning up on the guns. He was a natural. He paused to check in with the tanks on the ground. Then he aimed the rock-cutting laser precisely to hit the beacon, lighting a ring of trees into torches. Those gleamed white on the main window.
“Now line up behind that point,” Zan requested. “Fly exactly along the course I gave you. Can we get an overlay of that?”
Wilder complied, laying the route map over the greenish night vision murk. Eyes darting between his flying and his elevation route display, he also marked the saddle of the next ridge. “That’s the pterry danger, right?”
“One of them,” Zan agreed. He held a ‘wait’ hand while listening intently to his ground contact. “Yeah, three pterries spotted above the ridge today.”
“How do they see anything from down there?” Sass inquired.
“Climb a tree,” Zan replied.
Wilder shot her a grin. “Are you ready yet?” the sergeant demanded of his native gunner. “I need to put on speed to get lift on the wings. Or this will be a very short trip.”
“Sorry,” Zan acknowledged, his strangely bare brow crumpled. “I don’t understand.”
Sass intervened. “Go or no go, Zan? When we go, we go fast. We can explain wings later.”
The hunter braced himself, ready to do battle with murderous flyers. “I am ready!”
“Going,” Wilder agreed, and laid on speed.
Zan laid down a laser line of flaming death burning the road below them, without taking his eye off the pterry pass for long. He concurred with Wilder that a sonic weapon would best the flying predators more easily. But the diminutive shuttle only had one weapon slot. The opportunity to burn off a winter’s worth of forest was
too tempting, and the laser won.
“Is that –?” Wilder started to point out. But Zan shifted aim and shot the pseudo-pterodactyl before the sergeant could be sure of his identification.
Clay tugged on Sass’s shirt to suggest she sit back. Unhappily, she complied. Clay was right. With tricky flying and shooting, and burning a swath through the forest, the last thing the front seat crew needed was interruptions from her. It was maddening to play passenger and let them do everything while her hands itched for the controls. But they’d fly back without her. They needed to learn, and she needed to let them.
She hated that. To distract herself, she asked, “Aurora, this is your first time to Neptune. Is it so uncommon for people to travel between cities?”
“I’ve been to the coast,” Aurora contradicted her. “Just never beneath the sea. Neptune doesn’t encourage visitors.”
Clay frowned. “Because?”
“Nothing bad,” Aurora assured him. “Limited capacity in the compression and diving chambers. I think they cost a lot of power, too. If people have business in Neptune, they’re welcome. But vision-quests and curious youth, not so much.”
“Vision quest?” Sass asked. “You went to the ocean for a vision?”
“No, I went there on a date,” the geisha replied. “Paid contract.”
Clay subtly shook his head. Don’t follow that up, as Sass interpreted the gesture.
Sitting beside Aurora in the rear seats, Kassidy missed the hint. “Are you saying a man paid you to accompany him to the ocean?”
“Woman. She was on a vision quest. Something about Jonah and a whale.”
Kassidy blinked. “So you accept male and female clients?”
“Of course.”
The shuttle swerved abruptly. “Circle around!” Zan demanded, still shooting.
“Dammit, I thought you said three pterries!” Wilder countered. But judging from the still-banked shuttle, he complied with a loop.
“Their young,” Zan explained. “Shoot one, and its children attack you. Spring is fledgling season.”
“I didn’t see anything fly up from the ground,” the sergeant argued.
Zan focused on a few more laser blasts before he replied. “Pterry are roos. What was the Earth word… Kangaroos? Ours aren’t mammals, but they carry their young in a pouch. Most predators do, to protect them. Anyway, injure one and their young fly out.” He carefully lined up another set of the baby terrors, and shot three out of the sky in a row, from a moving shuttle.
Damn, he’s good, Sass acknowledged. The three segregated Denali castes horrified her at first – the hunters, farmers, and cosmopolitans. But the longer she stayed here the more she appreciated the advantages. Zan was born to kill, and he occupied a niche where his blood-lust was entirely accepted and nurtured. The timid and less verbal thrived as farmers. The range of temperaments and talents learned to cooperate in the environment of radical honesty enforced by their tattle-tale skin bakkra.
“Back around,” Zan demanded. “Need to resume the road burn.”
Sass leaned forward again to check the batteries, and ignored Clay’s tug on her shirt. “Zan, the road is lower priority than reaching the wharf.”
“We must do both,” Zan insisted. “Try harder.”
“We aren’t stopping for the next pterries, then,” Wilder said.
This exchange devolved into acrimony until Sass reached a hand first for Wilder’s shoulder, then Zan’s arm. “Guys, stop arguing. Zan. From here, stop firing at the road. You’ve cleared enough for them for one day. Sergeant, you have enough power to reach Neptune and shoot pterries, don’t you?”
Wilder sighed heavily. “Yes, but Cap –”
Sass overrode him. “You’ll need two trips to make it back to Waterfalls. Recharge, burn. Then recharge, and fly back. You can recharge at the wharf twice.”
Zan objected, “The swine in Neptune will demand blood for the charging!”
“It doesn’t matter, Zan,” Sass soothed him. “The shuttle can barely manage the flight back. It can’t fly this hard and burn the lasers full time as well.”
Aurora added, “Sass has the credit to pay, Zan. You’ll get your power at the wharf.”
Bless you, Abel. He’d been selling his heart out to earn them this kind of carte blanche – whatever they wanted, they could have. The look on Zan’s face had been priceless when he learned the Selectmen had essentially sold him and his crew, plus three tanks, to power this expedition. He looked boggled anew at just how much the Thrive crew could demand. At Neptune, likely Zan would have needed to beg for as much as a recharged flashlight.
“Incoming!” Wilder called, dodging at the same time.
Sass spotted the V-formation of pterries on the sonic display. Cold-blooded, the beasties didn’t show on the green screen. They didn’t show well on the sonics, either, as wing-flaps in the wind were hard to hear, and they didn’t announce themselves as they came in for the kill.
“Don’t dodge!” Zan yelled at him. “We need to stay above the road!”
“You’re effing crazy!” Wilder complained, but veered back to the road’s course as ordered, while Zan rapid-fired. He hit the lead bird, then the left and right flankers. In the meantime a new lead established himself, and Zan cycled back to hit him just before the shuttle passed through them.
“Flip around!” Zan demanded.
“No. Gotta outrun them,” Wilder insisted. “We’re too low on power!”
“They won’t run out of power!” Zan retorted. “Captain!”
Sass made the call instantly. “He’s right, Wilder. Turn and fight.”
“Dammit!” Wilder banked up and around, hoping to dive-bomb their pursuers. But in the meantime, the five remaining pterries had split, two high, three low.
“Head for that one.” Zan stabbed at the middle of the lower three while firing at the higher two. For a nail-biting several seconds, Sass thought they were going to collide with that giant pterry in their path, but Zan switched his aim to blast him, and Wilder dodged right, at the same final instant.
Blast her, apparently. Assuming that momma birds were the one with babies on board, an aspect of Denali biology that Sass wasn’t sure about. At any rate, they were down three big ones, still had two medium incoming, and now five fledgling monsters were loose as well.
Perforce, Wilder came around yet again, and Zan burned through the two bigger pterries and two of the babies. At that point the remaining three juveniles lost their nerve and fled.
By now a red light had been blinking on the route map for 10 seconds. They didn’t have enough power left to reach the wharf.
11
“Change of crew,” Sass ordered. “Clay, you’re pilot. I’m guns. Wilder, Zan, get out of those seats! Now!”
The hunter looked murderous as Sass thrust past him to take the gunner’s seat. Wilder looked relieved. He didn’t have a clue how to land this shuttle safely if they couldn’t reach the wharf.
Neither did Sass. “Glide, Rocha! Every inch you can,” she begged.
“Teach your grandma to suck eggs, Collier,” Clay returned. He was still following the beam, however, letting the shuttle track the road, speed, and programmed plan for decreasing altitude while he studied the problem on green screen, topography, and sonic views.
Sass couldn’t imagine what he was getting from the night vision display, though his attention seemed mostly focused on that. She herself was tracking several suspected pterries. She aimed at them, let the computer get a good bead, and locked each on a macro button. From there the computer could track them and she could decide when to shoot with a single button press.
“What did you just do?” Zan demanded. Ben ran him through the basic gun training, but didn’t teach him to program the targeting computer.
“Advanced lessons,” Sass returned shortly. “Later. Come on, Clay…”
“There,” her lover replied in satisfaction. To her astonishment, he suddenly goosed the engines more, and shot up, adding a
good 45 kph to their wind speed.
“What are you –?” But then she saw it. He’d found an updraft into higher on-shore winds. Just a few more seconds – and he cut the engines dead. They were gliding.
“Oh, sweet,” he murmured, entranced. “The air pressure here is incredible. The lift is a thing of beauty.”
“We’re twelve klicks off the road,” Sass differed. “You did understand that part of the plan, right, Clay?”
“I did,” he agreed. “And it’s irrelevant if we can reach the wharf instead of crash land in a forest.” He paused to veer – apparently by feel, but possibly aiming for the faintest deepening of green on the window – and picked up another 10 meters on the altimeter.
“Damn, you’re good,” Sass breathed.
“Why thank you, dear. How are your feathered friends?” he inquired.
“They have feathers?” Sass retorted. “Bogey two might still need killing. I’m trying to conserve power.” Belatedly, she cut interior lights and life support. The fans whirred down to silence.
“Much better,” Clay encouraged. “In fact…” He leaned forward and turned on the interior speakers, so he could hear the wind. After a few more seconds of seeming to commune with the air currents, he veered again onto a more turbulent heading. They both belatedly took a moment to buckle their harnesses. Sass glanced back to check, but Wilder and Zan shared the same excellent notion.
“Zan,” Clay asked, “onshore wind at the coast? Or offshore?”
“Onshore, always,” Zan supplied. “The winds are fierce. At ground level at least.” He paused and thought about it. “As high as a pterry flies, they’re onshore.”
“Thank you. Define fierce. Do you know a wind speed?”
This seemed to strain even their expert hunter’s mastery of the natural world. Neptune wasn’t his neighborhood, after all. Sass had already given up when he answered. “Minimum 20 kph onshore. Gusty, up to 30 kph. On a good day. Today is… I’m sorry. I’ve never been to Neptune this early in the spring. There’s a cyclone over the ocean, but not near. My guess is breezy, maybe 10 to 15 kph higher. So 30 to 45. I’m only guessing.”
