by R. A. Nargi
That was fairly difficult, given the fact that the Rhya were an advanced race of beings who resembled semi-transparent floating eels.
“I’m not following.”
“Let’s start at the beginning,” she said. “You’re the Rhya, custodians of many different archaeological sites. Yueld happens to be one of them that’s inhabited.”
“By the Obaswoon.”
“And the Batalarians,” she said.
I nodded.
“So you get some rumblings that the natural jump gate is going to open, and you do the lottery thing to limit who gets to go explore this time,” she said. “And everyone knows the rules. One hundred hours then it’s time to come home.”
“Sure. Where are you going with this?”
She smacked my arm. “I’m getting to that! So, let’s think about the Obaswoon. They’re TL-5, at most. Scavengers. Struggling in the ruins of Roan Andessa.”
What Chiraine was saying lined up with the little I knew about the Obaswoon.
“That’s why Roan Andessa was off limits,” I said.
“Exactly. And that’s why there were all those Rhya wardships hanging around. The city was crawling with Rhya. They didn’t want us, the Faiurae, or the Mayir interfering with the Obaswoon.”
“Okay. So what?”
Chiraine slid off the MedBed and came towards me with an intense look on her face. “What if there’s a wardship parked up there—in Roan Andessa?”
A wardship? My head started filling with the possibilities. “That would be nice, but how would we even control it?”
“Maybe we don’t need to,” Chiraine said. “Maybe the ship is smart enough to know what to do.”
We rushed back towards the bridge where we filled Ana-Zhi in on Chiraine’s theory.
Ana-Zhi shook her head. “You’re not thinking straight.”
“Why?” I asked. “Qualt said that they took out the Rhya, but he never said anything about their ships.”
“He mentioned a scidatium,” Chiraine said. “That’s viral.”
“I know what a scidatium is,” Ana-Zhi said.
“If this attack happened while a wardship was parked in the city above, we might be able to—”
“What?” Ana-Zhi scoffed. “You think you can operate Rhya tech?”
I shook my head and turned to Chiraine. “Tell her.”
“The Shima believe that the Rhya wardships are sentient.”
“What?”
“They’ve been studying Rhya craft for over thirty years.”
“Studying how? No one’s ever been on board a Rhya ship.”
“Interaction monitoring,” Chiraine said. “Pathing, control mapping, and a lot of stuff I don’t quite understand. Suffice it to say that the Shima felt reasonably confident that the wardships are alive.”
“Alive? That’s a crock of—”
“What if it’s not?” I interjected.
“Even if the ships were sentient and happen to take pity on us, what good would it do?” Ana-Zhi asked. “The passage is closed.”
“Not necessarily,” Chiraine said.
“Yes, necessarily,” Ana-Zhi said. “That’s how the Fountain works.”
“In my research for the Shima I found some data about a clandestine experiment that they had conducted in 2329.”
I wracked my brain for the details about that mission. I knew that Beck Salvage had been hired by the Ly’uth to go into the Fountain in 2329, and I seemed to remember that the Shima had also been granted access in ’29.
“Who did they hire to go in for them?” I asked.
“Allegro,” Chiraine said. “And they managed to smuggle in some kind of long-range scanner… ‘shear’-something—”
“A radiant shear transmitter?” I offered. It was a low-energy scanner that was used a lot in asteroid prospecting.
“That’s it!” Chiraine said. “Anyway, Allegro hid this scanner thing somewhere on Ordilon and pointed it the Fountain. Ten years later Allegro went back. This time for SPRD, but they did a side job for the Shima and collected the data pod from the scanner.”
“I’m sure the nitty-gritty of data collection is all very exciting to academics like you, princess, but some of us need to get some rest,” Ana-Zhi said.
“It should be interesting to all of us,” Chiraine said sharply. “Because when they analyzed the data, the Shima scientists were convinced that the Fountain doesn’t fully close. They believed that it could be opened from this side—at any time.”
Ana-Zhi shook her head. “That’s ridiculous. The Rhya have shared their data with our scientists. It’s been studied for decades. We know for a fact that the passage only opens every seven to ten years.”
“Yes, from our side,” Chiraine said emphatically. “But what if what the Shima learned was true?”
This was making my brain explode. In the back of my mind, I had resigned myself to being stuck here for as long as a decade. Could we actually have a chance of getting home now?
I turned to Chiraine and snapped, “Why didn’t you mention this earlier? Like when we were freaking out on Bandala?”
She gave it right back to me. “That’s exactly why I didn’t mention it earlier! Because you were freaking out, and I didn’t want to distract us with something that’s a massive long shot anyway. Is that okay with you?”
“Sorry.” I took a deep breath.
“We’re all frazzled,” Ana-Zhi said. “Let’s get some shut-eye and discuss this in the morning. I need some time to process.”
“Agreed,” Chiraine said.
We made our way back to the crew quarters in silence. Ana-Zhi stopped off to give Qualt some water and teinsticks.
Down in the narrow hallway that led to a half dozen small cabins, I briefly considered asking Chiraine if she wanted some overnight company, but her stern expression and curt ‘good night’ answered my question before I could ask it.
I awoke the next morning feeling tired and disoriented. It took me a minute to remember where I was—on a Mayir Crusader Party ship in the Hodierna galaxy. We had been here over a week.
Back on the other side of the Fountain, there would be a lot of chaos. None of the expeditionary teams had returned. The Rhya wardens had been attacked.
What would the Shima be doing right now? And Uncle Wallace? This gig was supposed to be Beck Salvage’s lifeline—the one thing that could prevent the company from collapsing.
The news would reach my friends, of course. And Lirala.
I felt a little pang of something when I thought of her. I wasn’t sure what it was. Concern? Fear? Longing? My relationship with my fiancée was very complicated.
Someone else also came into my mind when I thought of Lir: a girl I had only met once, spoken with twice (I think), but definitely shared a bed with.
Preity Kapoor. Pretty was how I thought of her, although I knew she hated that nickname. She was almost the complete opposite of Lirala and she shouldn’t mean anything to me, but she did.
Yeah, complicated.
I quickly dressed and looked around the crew quarters for Chiraine and Ana-Zhi, but apparently I was the only one who slept in this morning.
I found them both up on the bridge.
“Good news, junior,” Ana-Zhi said. “Well, good news and bad news, really.”
“Don’t call me that.” I wasn’t fully awake and was feeling a bit cranky.
She grinned at me. “Touchy. What should I call you?”
“How about ‘Captain’? Does that work?”
Chiraine stifled a giggle with her hand.
“Well, Captain, the gaggle of cognitive tracer AIs I ran overnight finally came up with something. It’s kind of what I thought: a bum triode in an isolator module is messing with the weave.”
“Good. Did you replace it?”
“Yes I did, but the replacement went bad too.”
That wasn’t good. “Well then, it’s not the triode, is it?” I said brusquely.
“Someone woke up on the wrong si
de of the bed,” Chiraine said, half under her breath.
“Don’t bother me none,” Ana-Zhi said.
“Can we focus here, for a second?” I said. “Obviously, the problem is upstream.”
“Obviously,” Ana-Zhi said with a little smirk. “Fact of the matter is that there’s a little discharge retainer thingy connected to the module and that’s what got messed up when the cthulian decided to use our ship for juggling practice.”
I tried a more conciliatory tone. “I’m glad you are so on top of things, Ana-Zhi. So, did you replace that?”
“That’s the bad news part. Discharge retainers never fail. We don’t have any back-up stock on board.”
“Never fail?” Chiraine asked.
“Except now,” I said. “So can we fab one?”
“Sure we can, but, according to the KB, we need some mimonite.”
“Never heard of it.”
Chiraine perked up. “Is it also called a Cassandra Stone?”
“That sounds familiar.”
She jumped on a data pad. “I think it is…”
A few seconds later Chiraine jabbed the screen triumphantly. “Yes. Mimonite is also known as Cassandra Stone or Comet’s Tears. It’s a fairly common mineral—”
“Well, I haven’t heard of it,” I said.
“You interrupted me! I was saying that it was a common mineral in the Hodierna galaxy.”
“Then how is it a component in our ship?”
“Ours is synthetic,” Ana-Zhi said.
I felt a headache coming on. “Okay, so we need this mimonite stuff in order to fab a part. Right?”
“Right,” Ana-Zhi said.
I turned to Chiraine. “And it’s supposedly common in this part of the universe?”
“Yes. The reason I even knew about it was because the Sky Reavers particularly favored artwork carved from Cassandra Stone.”
“So…?”
“So, there’s a good chance there’s some right over our heads in Roan Andessa.”
“Are you serious?”
“Perfectly.”
Now we had two reasons to go into Roan Andessa: the mimonite we needed to get the ship’s power weave functioning normally, and Chiraine’s crazy theory that there might be a sentient Rhya wardship parked somewhere in the ruined city that lay 600 meters above us.
But we had one very good reason not to venture up to Roan Andessa: the Mayir.
It had been at least twelve hours since the Mayir had arrived here in the Nymorean system. Qualt had said it himself. They were going to come looking for the Vostok and the Kryrk.
But how exactly?
I sounded it out with Ana-Zhi while Chiraine went to get some food.
“Well, we know that they have a carrier—probably a Hammerhead-class—and twelve fighters, which would be either stingrays or skipjacks. I’d bet on them being stingrays. The MCP are partial to stingrays.”
“That’s reasonable,” I said.
“The carrier would have a bunch of landers and shuttles, of course. At least one dropship, but maybe more.”
“But if they were running a tactical op down here on Roan Andessa, they’d use the stingrays, right?”
“Depends. If they wanted to deploy ground forces they’d land a few dropships.”
We talked through the possibilities. The stingrays were one-man fighters. That meant twelve Mayir pilots—if they deployed the entire squadron on Roan Andessa.
“That isn’t likely,” Ana-Zhi said. “They’d hold five or six fighters in reserve—to guard the carrier. Even if there was no identified threat here in the Nymorean system. It’s standard procedure.”
“Okay, what about fireteams?” I asked. “They could just use the fighters for reconnaissance and then drop some boots on the ground.”
“Doubtful,” Ana-Zhi said. “Honestly, I think the more likely scenario is that they kit one of the fighters out with an RDS scanner and see if there’s anything in Roan Andessa that shouldn’t be there.”
“Like us?”
“We wouldn’t show up on the RDS. You know that.”
I did know that, but it only made me feel slightly more assured.
On the one hand, there could be one or more six or eight man teams—with aerial support—combing the ruins for us. On the other hand, we couldn’t stay in this subterranean cave forever.
“Let’s go for it,” I said. “I’ll do a smash and grab. Just me. It will be safer that way.”
Ana-Zhi shook her head. “It don’t work that way. There’s too much that could go wrong on a solo mission. We both go up. Besides, I’m the one who has been up there before.”
I argued with her for a minute or so, but only half-heartedly. Ana-Zhi was right. It was a lot safer if we both went, and she had led the team during the previous incursion.
That meant Chiraine would stay on the ship. Normally, the person on the ship would be running a scan for the remote team, and directing the ops. But we needed to run blind. No data or comm signature. And no beacons.
When she got back, I outlined the plan. Ana-Zhi and I would take the sled within 100 meters of the top of the Well of Forever, and then climb the remaining distance ourselves—just in case someone was scanning for a z-field. We’d then try to find something with a bit of mimonite in it.
“Your best bet is a statue or a carving,” Chiraine said. “It’s too dangerous to use a crux scanner, so you’ll have to check the composition manually.”
While we were up there, we’d look around for a Rhya wardship. However, I wasn’t exactly sure what we would do if we found one. That might require a little improvisation.
While Ana-Zhi and I packed up the sled and outfitted ourselves, Chiraine scoured the science station for the lowest-tech testing kit she could find.
We managed to find some climbing gear and even a few late-model jetpacks.
“Are these things even safe?” I asked, as I slung one over my shoulders.
“Safer than falling,” Ana-Zhi muttered.
Chiraine handed me the test kit and explained how to use it. “How long will you be gone?”
“It will take us a few hours to get up there, a few hours to look around, and a few hours to get back,” Ana-Zhi said. “Let’s say eight hours for the mission. Feel free to start freaking out if we are not back before then.”
“Great,” Chiraine said. “I’ll do that.”
“Don’t let Qualt out, and maybe see if you can KB the comm system and figure out how to shut everything down,” Ana-Zhi told the younger woman. “The longer that remains activated, the more danger we’re in.”
“I’ll do my best.”
As we turned to the airlock, Chiraine took my hand. “Jannigan, be careful.”
I nodded.
“I need you back here safe and sound. And so does your father.”
“Will do.”
“Good. As long as we understand each other.” She planted a chaste farewell kiss on my cheek as Ana-Zhi smirked at me.
Weird. I still didn’t understand what Chiraine’s deal was. But right now I had more important things to focus on.
We eased the sled out of the launch tube and into the cool, damp cave air of the Well of Forever. It was time go climbing.
The first five hundred meters were easy as pie. Even though the vertical shaft we ascended was narrow and twisting in places, it was a straight shot up. While Ana-Zhi steered the sled, I had to keep my eyes locked on the altimeter. We decided not to chance using any micro drones even though they were extremely low-power devices. There were other ways they could be tracked, so it wasn’t worth the risk.
After five minutes or so, we hit our target elevation. Ana-Zhi moored the sled to a rock outcropping and double-checked the z-field drive.
“Is this going to last eight hours?” I asked. If the z-field failed, the sled would plummet a half a kilometer down into the cave and we’d be pretty screwed.
“Yes, it’s rated for twenty. Let’s get a move on.”
Our climb
ing gear included special boots and gloves fitted with electrostatic setae pads, which allowed us to scamper up the non-ferrous stone surface without much of an issue. We set pitons and used ropes as a back-up, and had our jetpacks turned on as a secondary back-up and to help get around the steep outcroppings. But it was mostly a matter of moving patiently, identifying handholds and footholds, and not doing anything stupid.
“Going down will be easier,” Ana-Zhi huffed, breathing hard.
I was concerned about her. She was a hefty woman—probably all muscle, but still. And she wasn’t young, either. However, what she lacked in physical prowess, she made up for with sheer determination.
It took us close to two hours, but we eventually found the place where Xooth had cut through a blockage in the shaft. The scoring from the plasma cutting torch was still fresh.
“Almost there,” Ana-Zhi said.
We both had to use our jetpacks to make it through the cut window in the shaft. Up on the other side we rested on a kind of natural stone platform. Two meters above our head we could see the stonework edge of the Well.
“Keep your eyes open,” Ana-Zhi said. “Remember what happened to Galish.”
I did remember what had happened to Hap Galish. He had been shot by an Obaswoon villager just after the team had recovered Ambit data from site A782. Fortunately Galish had been wearing his armored exosuit and hadn’t been seriously injured. But it was a stark reminder that even though the Obaswoon were not as technologically advanced as we were, they were far from being harmless.
The electronics of my original Welkin combat exosuit had been messed up during the skirmish with Qualt’s crew, so I had to make do with one of the crimson-colored exosuits taken from one of Qualt’s men. It worked just the same way as my original suit; it was just not quite as state-of-the-art. Still, it had functional body-armor, magtouch repulsors, and a mid-range haptic pulse. Nothing to sneeze at.
The jetpacks and climbing boots would be way too unwieldy to hike around in, so we stowed them on the stone platform and made the last two-meter climb unassisted.
As I pulled myself up over the edge of the Well, I got my first real-life glimpse of Tarkoja Plaza. I had seen it on the video feed, of course, but I was still surprised by how destroyed and old everything looked in real life. Most of the stone buildings surrounding the plaza were in ruins and enveloped by thick vegetation. When I flipped my visor up to get a better look, I caught a whiff of the heavy and humid air. It smelled odd—like rotten vegetables mixed with the tang of cooking fires.
