Pursuit of the Bold Page 16

  "Maybe that's why they constructed the big iron wall," I said. "So they don't accidently fall off."

  "Perhaps. And we appreciate the value presented in your simplistic analysis," he said.

  I chuckled. "Sendrei, I believe the Jonathan collective has voted me a simpleton."

  "It was bound to happen," Sendrei said. "We should form a voting collective of our own."

  "Perhaps our choice of words was indelicate," Jonathan said, his eyebrows raised as if to communicate surprise. "The analysis is simple. We do not consider humanity a simple species and have utmost respect for your capacity for complex analysis."

  I grinned. "Sorry, Jonathan. I'm just giving you a hard time. I suppose I'm impatient to get on with this mission so I'm making trouble."

  Jonathan looked at Sendrei and then back to me. I relished the confused look on his face. It had become more and more difficult to confuse the collective and I perversely enjoyed the challenge. "As we were saying … if the Piscivoru were concerned with falling from the cliffs, a multitude of other caves are more approachable. It is our analysis that they chose the least approachable cave within range of our sensors."

  "Is the apron in front of the wall wide enough for us to land?" I asked. Since the first time we'd seen her, Gaylon Brighton had been modified with broad wings that held extended-mission supplies.

  "It is not," Jonathan replied, immediately. "We recommend landing on the foothills below and utilizing gravity technology to aid in approach." He highlighted a landing site within a bowl on the side of the mountain. Their choice was interesting in that it would shield Gaylon Brighton from long range sensors in most directions except directly overhead.

  "Expecting trouble?" I asked.

  "That was my doing," Sendrei said. "I don't believe we're done with Kasumi hunters. Hopefully I'm just being paranoid."

  Flying in low, but not so low as to stir up dust from the surface, I set Gaylon Brighton gently on the ground.

  "I vote for blaster rifles," I said, standing up and walking to the bridge exit. "Jonathan, I assume you'd like to come along. Sendrei, too?"

  "Someone should stay behind, Liam," Sendrei said. "I am willing."

  "I think Tabby wants to finish her project." I found Tabby with a toolbox open and the Class-A replicator almost fully removed from its bulkhead. "Tabbs, you mind watching the ship while we look around?"

  She pulled on a thin translucent cable that stretched back into the bulkhead. "Copy that. Be safe."

  "The Phentera group offers to stay behind and assist in monitoring the ship," Jonathan said.

  "Sounds like we have a plan," I said. It was the second time a part of Jonathan's collective had willingly split off and I wondered how often it might occur in the future. According to Jonathan, the Phentera group enjoyed tactical analysis of ship-based security, including space-based and atmospheric-based combat. It was a schism that caused me concern, but I trusted the collective we knew as Jonathan and hoped they'd bring forward an issue if it was needed.

  Passing me in the hallway, Sendrei reached the armory first and handed me my newest favorite slug thrower and a heavy blaster rifle.

  "You should bring a cutting torch," Tabby called over the comms. "That gate is probably frozen shut."

  "Good point," I said and headed aft to the engineering bay.

  A few minutes later, Jonathan, Sendrei and I cycled through the airlock. The air at our elevation was less humid and cooler than it had been down in the Jarwain village.

  "Kind of miss having Hunter and Bray aboard. They've turned into good crew," I said, switching to a private channel as we started up the mountain, Jonathan and Sendrei using arc-jets and me with the grav-suit.

  "It is not as surprising with Petty Officer Bray," Sendrei said. "Her experience in Mars Protectorate and having been chosen for such a dangerous mission suggests she was on the fast-track. Mr. Hunter, while less refined in ship etiquette, is a hard worker and learns fast. I would be pleased to work with either of them in the future." I switched back to general comms as we crested the lip of the cave entrance.

  Sendrei swiped his foot across a layer of undisturbed sand that drifted across the ground. "There is no evidence of recent activity."

  "This wall is ancient." I peeled a rusted flake of steel the size of my hand from a post that had been driven into the stone floor and ceiling of the opening. The degradation of the posts along the wall was significant and the integrity of the wall had to have been severely compromised.

  "We believe this to be an entrance," Jonathan said, pointing at a waist-high panel, inset within the wall. Looking further down, there were two more such panels, evenly spaced along the length of the opening.

  "You said smaller," I acknowledged, joining him. I pushed on the panel and it gave a little, appearing to do so only because the metal was weak from age. I found a small hole that I suspected was some sort of keyed entrance, but it had long since rusted over.

  "Either this entrance is not primary or the occupants are indeed long deceased as the Jarwain suggested," Sendrei said.

  I stepped back and kicked at the door. A hollow bong echoed behind the wall. Rust dislodged and rained down, but the door didn't budge.

  "Plan B." I set down my blaster rifle and detached the plasma torch from my waist.

  "Copy that," Sendrei answered, swinging the butt of his blaster rifle into the door with no more effect than I'd had with my boot. I'd heard that the blaster rifles were nigh unto indestructible, but it still bothered me to see it used as a battering ram.

  "Door looks rotten, but there's plenty of steel left in there," he said. "It's all yours."

  With cutter in hand, I traced a molten line around the opening. The plasma stream took only a few minutes to work and the door fell inward. A plume of dust billowed out of the opening, pushed by a draft of humid air coming from inside the cave.

  "I think we'll need a bigger door," I said, crouching down and sticking my head through the hole, careful not to touch the slag left behind by the torch.

  "What do you see?" Sendrei asked.

  "Too dark," I answered, lifting the faceplate of my helmet for an unobstructed view.

  Just as I motioned for the helmet lamps to turn on, the end of a wooden stick crashed into the bridge of my nose. Instinctively, I lifted up, banging my head into the hot edge of the doorway. Realizing the danger of touching the cooling steel, I ducked out backward, falling to the ground while brushing frantically at the top of my helmet to dislodge any slag that might have stuck.

  "Liam!" Sendrei grabbed my suit and pulled me away from the hole.

  "Someone's in there," I temporarily forgot about the slag and lowered my hand to gently probe the area around my right eye, which felt like it was starting to swell shut. "How bad is it?" I asked, looking up at Sendrei.

  "Broke the skin," he said. "AI doesn't see any permanent damage. What happened?"

  "Something hit me with a stick."

  "That is certainly good news," he said.

  "Geez. How is getting a stick in my eye good news?"

  "We wondered if the Piscivoru were alive. It appears the answer to this is yes. That and the weapon was a stick and not a gun," he said. Immediate relief came as he slapped a med-patch over my eye.

  "I'm going to open up the hole," I closed my suit's helm again and accepted Sendrei’s hand up. I wasn't about to take another stick to the eye.

  It took a few more minutes to enlarge the opening and we stood back as a larger section of the wall fell away. With blaster rifle in hand and flood lamps blazing, I stepped through the entrance, Sendrei right on my six, prepared to meet whatever came at us.

  Okay, prepared for what we saw next might have been an overstatement. Instead of cavern walls, we entered the edge of what looked like a toy town set beneath an artificial, albeit convincing, blue sky. Movement from the right caught my eye as a small figure darted up and thwacked my calf.

  "What in Jupiter?" I asked.

  My attacker was a narro
w humanoid creature, wearing ragged tightly-wrapped strips from her upper torso down to her feet. The top of her head was covered in bumpy snake skin and a thick tail rested on the ground behind her. She only came up to my knee, which explained the small doors and dwelling spaces. Striking a second time, she chittered in a language my AI didn’t recognize. For such a small being, her strikes were surprisingly sharp and if not for my armor, I'd have taken real damage.

  "Be gentle, Captain," Jonathan warned. "I believe you are looking at the one Peris referred to as Tskir."

  At the sound of the name, my small attacker dropped to all fours and ran sideways in front of us to face Jonathan. Her movements were abrupt and startlingly fast. Unwilling to accept risk to Jonathan, Sendrei stepped between them, although he stowed his blaster rifle as he did.

  Unfazed, Jonathan chittered back at the little warrior. My AI translated as Jonathan attempted several different languages that all sounded the same. The Piscivoru, however, ceased her attack and stood with a curious look on her face somewhere in the middle of Jonathan's babbling. A minute later, the Piscivoru held up her hand, as if asking him to stop.

  "Tskir," she said, placing her hand over her chest. Her voice had a hiss to it and instead of teeth, she had a sharp ridge of cartilage along the jawline. Now that Tskir had stopped her flurried attack, I was able to take in more detail. The first thing I noticed was the flick of her long, narrow tongue as she assessed our group. Her hands and feet were long and narrow, just like the rest of her body, and with only four digits on each.

  "Liam Hoffen," I said, kneeling in front of her and placing my hand on chest.

  "Fishette," she said, pointing at the med-patch over my eye.

  "Yeah, you stuck a stick in my eye, if that's what you're getting on about," I said, opening my helm to remove the patch which had done about as much good as it was going to. It took a lot of restraint not to flinch as I allowed her to approach and consider my eye. She chittered as she lifted a delicate hand to my face and rested it on my cheek. The warmth of her palm reassured me for no reason I could understand. There was obvious intelligence in her face and I got the sense that she was very old, even though her skin, which resembled that of a snake, was tight.

  She tapped her finger on the bridge of my nose where she'd struck me and chittered again just before she stepped back. From a band along her waist, she pulled a device out and offered it to Jonathan, chittering all the while. I knew if she kept talking, the translator AI would eventually recognize the language.

  "What is it?" I asked as Jonathan cradled a finger-sized device.

  "Memory storage device," he said. "The encoding is not recognizable, it will take time to decipher."

  "This city is remarkable," Sendrei said. "No wonder they never leave. These buildings go far back into the rock and their technology is quite advanced."

  "I am the last," Tskir answered, looking up at Sendrei, the AI translator parsing her words perfectly. "A sickness killed most of my ancestors, long before my parents were born. This was to be the new home of Piscivoru, but our nests are now empty and I am the last of my broodlings."

  "We have information that a remnant of Piscivoru remain on your home planet," I said.

  "That is impossible," she answered. "The Kroo Ack destroyed our civilization and all those who live on our planet. They hunted Piscivoru until there were none remaining. Ours was the last of all to survive. It is too late for our people. I am a shriveled old female; my eggs are long ago dried within my body."

  "We may have news of importance to you," Jonathan said. "I have communed with a Kroerak noble. This very old and powerful Kroerak had information about the continued life of a small group of your people who are protected by Iskstar. What we don't know is where your home is. We only know the Kroerak fear nothing as much as they do the Iskstar."

  Tskir's lips thinned as her cheeks pulled back. "It was entrusted to me to survive. We hoped that someday we would have a chance to fill our nests with happy broods. Many sacrificed to keep me alive. I had lost hope and believed I would die on Jarwain. Tell me, are you a friend to the Kroerak? Have you come to end Tskir's life? I say to you, there is no need, but I will welcome death. I have failed my people."

  "Liam," Tabby's voice caught my attention. "We might have a problem. The Phentera group is tracking a ship breaking orbit. It looks like they're headed straight for the Jarwain village we visited. Signature reads like it might be the Kasumi."

  "Frak," I said, turning away from the conversation. "Any sign they know we're here?"

  "No, but Hunter and Bray are defenseless," she said. "There's no telling what the Kasumi might do."

  "Copy that," I answered. "Stay put and don't do anything. We'll need to cut comms, just in case they're tracking EM. We found Tskir, we just need to get the location of Piscivoru home planet and we can get going."

  "We need to help the Jarwainians," Tabby insisted.

  "Understood," I said, cutting comms.

  "I'm sorry to be abrupt, Tskir," I said. "No. We are not friends of Kroerak. In fact, the Kroerak attempted to destroy my home planet as it did yours. We stopped them, but it was only temporary. The Kroerak discovered a cure for the weapon we used against them. We need to know the location of your home planet so we can find this Iskstar. We believe it is the only way to defeat them once and for all."

  "Who is hunting you, Liam Hoffen?" she asked. "I overheard your communications. I do not trust that you are telling Tskir the truth."

  "We think it is agents of the Kroerak. They are trying to stop us from finding your home," I said.

  "I will not tell you where my home is," she said.

  "You have to," I said. "Those who chase us will surely come here and do you harm."

  "I have told you. I do not fear death. I have lived many cycles by myself," she said. "I do not wish to continue."

  "Then come with us," I said. "Show us your home. Stand on the ground of your ancestors. If your people still live, you will be a treasure to them."

  "You would take me home?"

  "Liam!" Tabby broke in again. "Phentera group says they've received transmission from Bray. She reported the Kasumi ship, but we lost contact almost immediately after."

  "Yes, Tskir, but we must go now," I said, trying not to let the anxiety I felt enter my voice. "The Kasumi are attacking the Jarwain. We must help them. If you're coming, we need to go now."

  "Then let us leave," she answered.

  "But the information on how to get to your home," I said. "We need it."

  "Do not worry. I have it with me always," she said, fingering a small chain around her wrist.

  Chapter 15

  Into Darkness

  Within the ruined city's sewers, the weight of the desiccated corpses rested heavily on Sklisk and he sank into Jaelisk. As far as either could see within the long tunnel, lay the ancient corpses of his ancestors. While he had learned of the collapse of the once-great society and talked of the numbers of his people killed by Kroerak, it had seemed entirely academic. The reality of it all was too much. Sklisk closed his eyelids hoping to erase the images.

  "There were families," Jaelisk observed. "See how the broodlings rest on the parents. I cannot bear the thought of Baelisk and Boerisk dying in my arms."

  "It is too much," Sklisk said. "The Kroo Ack are too much."

  A sharp intake of air alerted him that Jaelisk was annoyed. "Do you not see what they have done?" The vibration of her tongue communicated anger. "Would you not fight until your last breath to stop them?"

  "How?" Sklisk asked.

  "Our ancestors have shown us the way. No Kroo Ack killed them," she said. "They passed down here in the tunnels."

  "The Kroo Ack might as well have murdered them. Our ancestors hid from them, only to die," he answered.

  "But they had not Iskstar," she said. "The Kroo Ack might have numbers, but the bugs have also fed our people for generations. If it takes a hundred hands of moon cycles, we will find Engirisk's building and his devi
ces. We will honor our ancestors by showing them that we yet live and yet fight."

  "What are you saying?"

  Jaelisk twitched her eyelids in annoyance and grasped Sklisk's shoulder. "Where do you think these tunnels go? Is it not possible they pass beneath Engirisk's building?"

  Sklisk's eyelids fluttered open. "Yes," he said, surprised.

  "You should act surprised when I am brilliant," she said. "Now which way must we go?"

  "We go this way," Sklisk said, moving in the direction he was fairly certain would take them toward Engirisk's building. The host of Kroerak above would likely surround every nearby exit hole. Sklisk feared he was leading them to a fight that could not be won, but they had to complete their mission.

  Carefully picking their way around the partially mummified remains, he found it disturbing when his tail inadvertently made contact. In some cases, the bodies broke apart and rolled away. Sometimes the lightest touch caused complete disintegration. In his mind, the presence of the bodies gave credence to Jaelisk's notion that his ancestors watched as they struggled to complete the mission Engirisk had given them.

  With little noise, they continued until finally, Sklisk stopped. It was one thing to navigate above the surface; the building shapes were easy to pick out, even with bugs surrounding them. In the tunnels, however, it was much more difficult, especially given the frequent small tunnels that branched off in all directions.

  "I am disoriented," he finally admitted. "I do not know if I bring us closer or further from our destination."

  "The bugs will have settled," Jaelisk said. "Provide to me your weapon and I will go above and orient."

  "We go together," Sklisk said, climbing onto the wall and into a narrow chute that led to the surface. "There is no reason to separate."