Acid. The fruits were spewing some type of acid. Great. Poison, at least, would have been less painful.
Anders obliterated three of the fruit pods with his blaster, sending brown goop flying. He didn’t flinch as a spot landed on the side of his neck, forming another burn to add to his collection. I cursed when a glob hit my forearm, nearly causing me to drop my blaster. Elio grabbed a knife from the pack on his shoulders, flinging it and spearing the pod at his feet. The pod opened, wailing, but then it quickly wilted and rolled into the safety of a nearby shrub.
What a little genius. Blasting the pods apart caused the slime inside to spread, multiplying them. But a less flashy measure of destroying them would stop them for good.
“Drop your blaster!” I yelled to Anders. He hesitated as I slid a rusty butcher’s knife from the galley out of my own pack, stabbing two of the pods rolling toward our feet. They sputtered as they died, only shooting out a small drop of slime that burned my wrist. Anders and I kicked them into the underbrush.
Wren looked up from stabbing her own pod into submission. Her clothes were singed and smoking, her face shield covered in beads of sweat. With a shaky hand, she pointed to the dense jungle in front of us.
My breath hitched. I no longer felt the burns covering my skin.
The trees were moving. Parting.
We had company.
The fruit pods seemed to shiver as the ground vibrated under the weight of incoming footsteps. Elio’s hands moved to cover his gaping mouth, and I noticed new wire patches dotting his already corroded forearms. Not even being robotic could spare him from the acid’s wrath.
Another footstep. The fruit wall shook. A few pods plummeted to the ground, screaming, and a tree just north of our path cracked and tumbled to the jungle floor. To hell with the knives. The four of us raised our blasters instead.
I tried to ignore the nagging thought in the back of my mind, the one that told me Wren was right: we had no proof that Teolia’s key was even stashed on this mountain. It could be gone, collected by someone else years ago. It could have never been here to begin with. And now we were facing the dangers on this planet for nothing, nothing, nothing.
I had agreed to this. I let the warden give us this job. If we died here, if Elio died here, murdered by whatever was creeping toward us, that would be on me.
From the depths of the shadows, a spindly figure emerged. My first instinct was to call it a human, but that wasn’t correct. It had pale, pinkish skin dotted with wispy hairs, but it also had thick claws on its hands and feet and a round, upturned snout. A tail writhed behind its body, tipped with a tuft of black fur and a crusty glob of mud.
What kind of horror show was this planet putting on?
The creature stooped down a few yards away, pawing at the fruit hiding beneath the bushes. The pods squealed in terror, but they were silenced when the monster bit into their shells. It chewed, jaw working furiously, then swallowed and licked its lips. A drop of acid dribbled down its chin.
Wren nudged me. “It just ate—”
“I know.” If the creature could chow down on a mouthful of acid without breaking a sweat, then what in all the stars would it do to us?
“It looks sort of like a pig,” said Elio. “Man. A pig man.”
Wren wrinkled her nose. “I think it looks like Anders.”
Anders muttered something unintelligible.
“Play nice, children.” I wedged myself between them, raising my blaster higher. It was low on power already, despite my having barely used it. Lousy piece of junk. The light at the end of the barrel flickered before the blue glow faded entirely. Dead. How pathetic.
The monster stepped closer, snorting and sniffing out the air for a fresh food source.
Us.
I thought fast. “Bang!” I shouted, pointing my useless blaster at the treetops, hoping to distract the snorting menace. I pulled back theatrically on the trigger, shifting my weight from toes to heels, really getting into it. “Plug your ears, everyone. This is going to get loud. Bang! Bang!”
“What in all the stars…?” Wren muttered.
“Shoo!” I waved the blaster in the direction of the pig creature, barely holding back a gag when it snorted and sent thick green mucus flying at my face shield. This was just like the time my family held some diplomats’ children hostage on the planet Viicury. Well, kind of. I had been responsible for occupying the nursery containing the infants, who, despite having ten glittering eyes apiece, were far cuter than this creature. There had been just as much mucus, though.
At least the monster was distracted. It hardly noticed when Elio powered up his blaster with a grinding buzz and aimed right between the creature’s eyes.
“NO! STOP!”
His finger flinched on the trigger.
The shout had come from Anders. Until now, I was convinced he didn’t care about any living organism except himself, so I definitely thought I was hallucinating when he put himself between Elio and the beast, holding up his hands while it continued to snort.
“You can’t shoot it,” he said, eyes wild behind his mask. “It’s endangered. It responds best to gentle encouragement.”
“What is it?” Wren asked.
“A porci.” He smiled fondly at the pig man. Of course Anders would have a soft spot for a beast that guzzled acid like water and spewed fountains of mucus. “We had one when I was in the military. The wild ones are a little rough, but they can be trained. They’re excellent trackers.”
The porci snorted again, flinging a glob of mucus at the side of Anders’s head. He cursed but didn’t stand down.
“Key?” He twisted his hand like he was trying to unlock an invisible door. “Do you know where we can find the key?”
The porci took a step closer, pawing at the dirt.
“It thinks you’re trying to beckon it.” I shoved Anders’s hand to his side. “Stop it.”
“Be calm, Cora. It knows exactly what I’m saying. It’s smart.”
Wren scoffed. “I’d argue that those fruit pods were pretty smart to try to incapacitate us with their jelly insides. Or the shrub that wanted to drain me like a tropical drink.”
“Hush. Your voice is making him agitated.”
“He doesn’t look agitated. He looks hungry.”
“Fine, I lied. Your voice is making me agitated. Settle down.”
I studied the creature, which was drooling saliva from its fangs onto a boulder at its feet. To me, it looked hungry and agitated.
“Easy now.” Anders walked toward it, hand outstretched. If he wanted to lose a finger, then that was his issue. I kept my butcher knife handy just in case the porci turned on us.
But it didn’t. It let Anders place a gentle hand on its head, stubby snout scrunched up contentedly, and sighed. Then something truly alarming happened: Anders leaned close enough to touch his face shield to the porci’s snout and … he started to sing.
Wren’s jaw dropped. “Oh dear God…”
Elio ate the performance up, swaying while Anders’s deep voice carried up the mountain path. A few sour notes rang out, but most were clear, their low timbre echoing around us. He was singing in his native language, so I barely knew the words, but that didn’t matter to the porci. It edged closer, tucking its head into the crook of Anders’s neck like it was nothing more than a house pet. I just hoped it wouldn’t try to follow us back to the ship.
Wren scowled at the two of them; the porci looked like it was close to falling asleep on Anders’s shoulder. “If I didn’t think we needed them, then I’d say we ditch them and keep the treasure all for ourselves.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in the treasure,” I said.
She shrugged, silent. Would Wren try to leave us when everything was said and done? Surely she wouldn’t. She wasn’t me.
After another minute, Anders finally shut up and pulled his head away from the porci. “It will lead us to the key now.”
“Fantastic.” I followed the beast as it shoved
aside a few leaves and scampered up the trail. “You have the voice of an angel, just so you know.”
“I feel like you’re making a joke.”
“A joke? Me? I don’t even know what a joke is.” I edged to the side of the path as Wren charged past, carrying Elio on her back.
Anders brought up the rear. His steps were so silent (thanks, Andilly military) that if I didn’t know he was behind me, I would have jumped sky high when his hand darted out, claws gleaming, and clenched around my neck. The wind was momentarily knocked out of me when he dragged me back, slamming my body against his chest.
“Never,” he growled in my ear, “speak of my singing again. Because if you do, I will rip out your vocal cords, mince them, and delight in drinking them through a bendy straw.”
I fought to catch my breath. “There’s the Andy I know and fear.”
His grip around my neck was loose enough for me to talk, so I knew he didn’t really want to hurt me. He hadn’t even restrained my arms, which I took full advantage of by driving my elbow back, nailing him with one of the only self-defense moves I knew: strike to the solar plexus.
Anders doubled over, releasing his hold on my neck. And that was how I really knew he never intended to harm me. If he wanted, he could have had me crushed under his boot in five seconds flat. Maybe even three.
I stepped over him, leaving him crouching in the dirt. “By the way,” I added, “if the porci changes its mind and gets hungry, I’m volunteering you to be its first snack.”
12
Dusk was creeping in by the time we reached the summit, wispy pink clouds streaking the sky. We encountered no other obstacles on the journey. It seemed like everything on Cadrolla feared the porci, but I couldn’t shake the prickle at the back of my neck, the warning that we needed to get off this planet as soon as possible. We were supposed to be gone before nightfall. I already wasn’t fond of Cadrolla’s daylight creatures. The nighttime creatures—stars, I couldn’t even imagine what those must be like.
The porci was the only one of us who didn’t seem the least bit anxious. The star-forsaken thing was disgustingly joyful as it bounded from shrub to shrub, digging up dirt and shoving its snout into holes to search for food. Wren removed a protein pouch from her pack and chucked it at the porci’s head just to get it to calm down. After the creature tore into the package, inhaling the powder inside with such enthusiasm that it dissolved into a coughing fit, Anders tapped it on its bony shoulder and gestured around the mountain peak.
“Well? We’re not taking a moonlit stroll for fun. We’re looking for a key, remember?”
The porci nodded, ears flapping, then put its snout to the ground again. It spun in a circle once, twice, then finally picked its head up and pointed with one long finger to an opening in the rock face. It was tough to see in the shadows, but it looked like there was a gravel path sloping down into the depths of the mountain.
A tomb. Just like on Vaotis.
Elio and I locked inside, floodwaters rising.
My heart rammed against my breastbone as the violent hiss of oxygen filled my mask, struggling to save me. No, it wouldn’t happen again. I wouldn’t drown, even if there was water down there. I had oxygen this time. I wasn’t defenseless.
I let out a small yelp when I felt the tentative pressure of a hand on my back. Wren.
“You coming?” The others were already ahead of us, disappearing into the cave. Elio was last, and he looked back for a second, tilting his head in question before the darkness swallowed him up.
And then it was just me and Wren and the whisper of the jungle that spread out below us, the dark leaves blending into the velvet sky until the planet was nothing more than a sea of blackness spreading out for eternity. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought we had been dropped right into outer space again. The only things missing were the stars.
Wren cleared her throat. “If you’re claustrophobic, deep breaths help. Luckily you already have oxygen on you.”
“I’m not claustrophobic.”
“Then what?”
I wished I could brush her off, grit my teeth, and follow the others, because it wasn’t any of her business. But if I wanted to continue following my grand master plan, I had to make it her business.
“I don’t do well with water,” I confessed. “And the last time I went underground like this … there was water and…” And even I knew how pathetic I sounded, afraid of something that I couldn’t even see yet.
But Wren didn’t look at me like I was pathetic, like Evelina would have. Instead she simply linked her arm through my mine.
“I’m afraid of birds,” she said matter-of-factly. “I suspect it’s the flapping noise they make, but I also hate when they fly close enough to buzz me. So there. Now we know each other’s dirty little secrets.”
Yeah. Not quite.
But before I could argue, Wren dragged me forward, doing either the friendliest or most vindictive thing she could have done in the situation. She stood at my side as we entered the cave, following the sloping floor down into the black hole. She didn’t let go of my arm, not when the porci’s snort broke the silence, making me jolt in fear. Not when the steady drip, drip, drip of water trickled from the stalactites, hitting the cave floor and us along with it. She refused to let me run.
Maybe she really was trying to kill me. It would be to her benefit, after all.
The porci led us around twisting corners, the path growing so narrow that we eventually had to walk single file. I struggled to keep track of the turns we took. Left, right, right again at a fork, through a path of stalagmites and across a rocky bridge over a (blessedly) shallow stream. Maybe a few more lefts after that, but honestly it felt like we were walking in circles. With each step we took, the temperature dropped, until I was shivering in my flight suit.
“Are we there yet?” Elio whined.
As if in reply, there came a noise from around the next bend. It started off as a delicate humming but culminated in a powerful rushing as my unsteady footsteps brought me closer. The sound was static in my head, jangling my bones, filling my nerves with an electric charge so powerful that I could barely stand. Wren was still gripping me, leading us all toward the sound of water cascading down rocks inside the cave. I dug my heels into the ground but was met with a slick patch of gravel offering little resistance.
“It’s fine, Cora,” she said. “You’re fine.”
Yeah, right. The waterfall pounding into the pit below us was one issue, but the thick streams of water hovering over our heads were another impossible problem entirely. Bands of water twisted through the air like ribbons, glistening where moonlight filtered in from gaps in the rocks way, way, way at the peak of the mountain. How far had we traveled underground? Half a mile? A mile?
At the bottom of a short stone ramp, the water from the falls lapped at the shoreline, spreading out to form a dark lake inside the base of the mountain. And in the middle, where the current appeared to be fiercest, waves smashed against a pedestal, cracked and worn away by the tide.
But it was the thing on top of the pedestal that caught our attention, causing Wren to grin, Elio and Anders to sigh, and me to whimper like an injured animal: the key, made of copper, studded with diamonds, gleaming beneath the lid of a glass case no larger than the palm of my hand.
No wonder no one had ever managed to retrieve it. There was no way out to the post that I could see except to swim. The violent undertow from the waterfall could kill any human instantly. And if that didn’t manage to do the job, there were always the ribbons above us, wiggling like snakes. I imagined one darting down my throat, drowning me, and my knees went weak again.
Somehow, I managed to pull myself together long enough to speak. “What an adorable setup. So who wants to venture inside the pit of despair first?”
Elio looked over at me, well aware of the Cora-is-terrified-of-water issue. “We don’t have to do this—”
“Of course we do,” Wren interrupted. “The w
arden wasn’t crazy after all.”
“No, he’s definitely still crazy,” Anders said. He looked toward the porci, claws out. “This is it? There’s no easier way to the key?”
The porci merely shrugged. It swiped Wren’s pack from her shoulders, digging through until it located her bag of protein pouches, then ran from the cave, kicking up dust in its wake.
Abandoning us.
Anders stared after it, seething. “B’shkrah! Useless creature. If I ever see it again, I’m going to skin it and turn it into a stew.”
“Beep-beep! Now what do we do?” Elio asked.
None of us had an answer to that, proving once and for all that we truly were the worst group of misfits to carry out the warden’s treasure hunting scheme. But we were so close. I could feel the key’s energy pulsing around me, like it carried its own aura, although its colors were lost in the cloud of mist spilling from the waterfall.
“There’s a skiff.” Anders motioned to the ramp leading down to the water’s edge, where a little wooden boat poked out of a clump of reeds. “Follow me. Carefully.”
He seemed more than happy to be our self-appointed leader, which was fine with me. What was not fine was how close we were getting to the water. I held on to Elio’s arm as we shuffled down the slick ramp onto a shore covered in mossy pebbles. With a beep, he ejected a few suction cups on the bottom of his feet to keep from slipping.
“It looks rotted,” Wren said as she tugged the boat out of the reeds. Anders bent down to examine the water lapping at his boots. “It’ll be a miracle if it doesn’t fall apart right under us.” She nudged the skiff with her toe, and we both frowned as a piece of the hull broke off. “Lovely. I’m assuming you don’t want to paddle out with me.”
“I’d rather not,” I replied. “But if you need me to…”
She waved me off, tugging an equally rotted oar from the depths of the skiff. “Nonsense. I’ll be fine alone. Stealing a priceless artifact is practically a day at the beach for me and—”
A bloodcurdling wail cut through the cavern.
“What was that?”
The Good for Nothings Page 13
