Hostile Legacy, page 18
part #2 of Afterwar Saga Series
“Um, I’m not exactly sure where the realization came from,” I said sheepishly. “It clicked while you were talking. Probably through our bond.”
“Perhaps,” Olivia said, nodding thoughtfully. “The coincidences of our daily lives intersecting with the problems of Curie are significant. I am not exactly sure how everything fits together, but you are right, Quinn. Noctisid are intent on destroying Iskstar and those related to Iskstar. It is by luck that we were not taken when Stoneville was attacked.”
“Why now?” Cassius asked. “Kroerak war was over half a century ago and they’re just having this trouble now?”
“That is indeed a mystery,” Olivia said. “One that we must take great risks to uncover.”
“We’re going back to the dark, scary cave where I’m the only one who can’t see anything,” Addy said.
“I’m pretty sure our invitations were rescinded,” Cassius said. “I’m not sure we want to go banging around with Shala warriors on our trail.”
“We can make headsets for better vision in the caves,” I said.
“Are you thinking of some sort of infrared heat detection?” Addy asked.
“Like that,” I said. “We just need to project a frequency we don’t think our opponents are picking up and tune our HUDs to convert that to imagery.”
“That’s good,” Addy said. “We could avoid frequencies in the audio and visual ranges. Ideally, we’d keep it low enough to get a good bounce off rocks. Get too high, the return signals would be muddled.”
“Hold on a second, those guys were tossing bullets at us, if you haven’t forgotten,” Cassius said. “And that’s when we were invited. Imagine how friendly they’ll be if they find us skulking around without permission.”
“The Noctisid is hunting us,” Olivia said soberly. “It senses our connection to Iskstar. We need to find it before it is too late, and more people needlessly die.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I argued. “I opened the door when it took Jeanest. It should have turned around and come for me if it could smell us.” Even while I knew my argument was weak, I desperately needed it to be true. If what Olivia was saying was true, it was my fault that Jeanest was dead. She’d chosen the wrong door to seek protection behind and died for that choice.
“There were Shala warriors on its tail,” Cassius said. “I doubt it’d have been in quite the same hurry if it didn’t see them as a threat. Besides, we don’t even know if it uses smell to find its targets.”
“I spoke to the vendor who sold shoes across from the robe vendor where you took shelter,” Olivia said. “They had video capture of the attack. I didn’t want to show this to you, but we all need to understand what we’re up against.”
I nodded. The video started with Stoneville’s take-cover alarm. Adrenaline soured my stomach as the sound sent me back to the day of the attack. Cassius said something and pointed at the projection. I realized he’d seen Addy and me running into the shop, encouraged by the shopkeeper. A thick door closed us in moments later.
“There!” Addy said.
Her word caught my attention as much as the eight thin spidery legs of a beast entering the frame. Standing two meters tall over its broad back, its multi-jointed legs were not smooth, but were covered with coarse hairs. It differed from a common spider not only in overall size but also by its body shape and skin texture which seemed more desert reptilian than furry spider. It had a thick leathery neck and a predator’s forward-set eyes.
The most disturbing thing about the Noctisid, however, was not its appearance, which was certainly concerning, but that it had dropped Jeanest onto the ground and bumped her toward the door, behind which I stood like a coward.
“Frak,” I said, struggling for breath. It had used Jeanest as bait, somehow understanding that I’d want to help.
Blaster fire ricocheted off the Noctisid’s back. It didn’t move, other than to poke a pointed limb into Jeanest’s side, eliciting a howl of pain. It was hurting her to spur her to action. I’d heard her cries in my dreams and sweat broke on my forehead as I watched her torture.
Two more blaster bolts slammed into the Noctisid. The beast turned its reptilian head and angrily snapped its jaw. When it was hit a fourth time, it snatched Jeanest with its forward legs, plunging sharp points through her abdomen. She didn’t die immediately but screamed even more as the vile monster crawled up the wall and raced out of view.
A moment later, I opened the shop’s door and Addy and I appeared. Olivia turned off the video.
“I’m sorry you had to see that, Quinn,” she said softly.
I wanted to scream but instead, I struggled to hold back tears. Our presence had caused Jeanest’s death. There was no other way to interpret the video.
“Those blasters barely touched that thing,” Cassius said, patting my thigh to let me know he understood my pain but was changing subjects. “Are our big hand blasters as heavy as the rifles?”
“No,” I said, drawing on my analytic side. “They were long shots, though. Liv, can you show the points of impact from those blaster rounds?”
She’d anticipated the question and I wondered if she’d somehow prompted Cassius to ask the question. The projection on the wall showed the combined energy and particle bullet impacting the Noctisid’s side.
I gestured for her to back up a smidge and she moved the video until I held my hand up. We already knew the rounds were annoying but not devastating. I wanted to see what they were impacting with as much resolution as possible. Olivia understood what I was after and zoomed in, so the Noctisid’s carapace filled the projection.
Bug skin is chitinous and not skin. It’s an exoskeleton. The eight spindly legs had us all thinking this. What I saw, however, was not the smooth or even hairy covering expected on a bug but rather reptilian skin.
“Back up, show how those legs are attached,” I said. Olivia did as I asked. I pointed and made varying gestures to get her to focus on what I wanted. The vendor’s camera angle wasn’t excellent, but I finally found what I was looking for.
“What is it?” Addy asked.
I drew my finger along a tendon that disappeared beneath natural plated armor. “This thing has armor, but don’t think insect or arachnoid. I’d say it’s more like a turtle but not only on its back. These legs are covered too. I can’t even imagine how evolution comes up with this stuff.”
“Kroerak plundered thousands, if not millions of worlds,” Olivia said. “They’d have known Noctisid were special.”
“Armored, lightning fast, smart enough to use people as bait,” Cassius said. “What bothers me is how it knew you’d try to help that woman. That’s high-level thinking. I’m not sure genus and phylum are nearly as interesting as that.”
“Quinn is looking for a weakness,” Addy said, defending me. “Shooting at armor is dumb. Tell me what happens if I poke a sharp stick into the armpit.”
“I’m not going to let you do that.”
“Why?”
“It would hurt.”
“Right. Find a weakness in your target. Generally, where joints move, there’s an opening,” she pushed on. “You didn’t grow up around a bunch of aliens. That was just part of study time back home for us.”
“You talked about how to poke people in their armpits,” Cassius said dryly. It was clear that he knew he was losing the conversation but wasn’t giving up. Addy was almost graceful enough to let it go. Almost.
“Want to go a couple of rounds? I’ll show you where it hurts.”
“Bah,” Cassius said, waving her off. He turned to Olivia, squinting to show his intentions. “Babe, you made a leap I can’t follow. You want to go back into the caves to find the Noctisid. That doesn’t make sense. If it’s in the caves, don’t you think the Noctisid would have found the grotto and destroyed it by now? That thing was impossibly fast and armored.”
“What are you babbling about?” Addy asked.
“Hold on,” I said, holding up my hand. “He’s onto something.”
“Thank you,” Cassius said, giving Addy a triumphant look. I ignored them both.
“Liv, tell me exactly how specific your conversation was about where we were supposed to hunt this Noctisid,” I said.
“There is no conversation with Iskstar that can be specific in the way you mean,” she said. “Communication is achieved through feelings over long periods. Why are you asking?”
“Humor me,” I said. “Do your best to explain what they’ve told you or whatever it feels like.”
“It’s dark,” she said. “And it smells like the caverns where we found Shala Tobek. There is no blue ambient light. It is more a vision than a video so you can’t take that literally.”
“Focus harder,” I said holding her hand. “Grab onto whatever senses you have. Talk about the smell. Is it the same or is it similar?”
“I, uh, well, not, not exactly the same.” She paused and her eyes closed in concentration.
I closed my own, I’m not sure why. Darkness settled over me and for just a moment, I caught a whiff of dank cave air. It was similar to the cave where we found Shala Tobek but there was something else.
“Sulfur,” I whispered. “No, I can’t quite get it. Do you smell that?”
“Yes.”
The connection was broken, and Olivia and I stared at each other. Cassius was right. It wasn’t the same cave. Only this time, I was pretty sure I knew what was going on.
“What is it, Quinn?” she asked.
“Cass, what do you know about mining in deep mines?” I asked.
“Not a ton,” he said. “They drill holes and use supports to keep the roof from falling on their heads. They use explosives on particularly hard spots. Seems crazy to me, you know, given they’re underground and all. But then they’re the same people who dug a couple of kilometers into the ground when there are perfectly good asteroids around to grab. That’s not overly sane now, is it?”
“What do explosives smell like?”
18
CROW THROAT STEW
“Hey, take a bit of advice?”
I was doing some fine-tuning on Smokey while waiting for the final call to line up for the Derby. As usual, my stomach was twisted in knots as I thought about the race ahead. Looking around for the speaker, I found Carace wearing a racing suit, and carrying an impact helmet.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought you said Derby was for the crazies.”
She laughed with amusement. “I didn’t say I wasn’t one of them. Besides, who has two grand for a Limited entry?”
“Not us,” I said ruefully agreeing. “What’s your advice?”
“They’re going to line all of us up between those two flags,” she said, pointing first at one tall pole and then sweeping her arm across to another pole half a kilometer away. “It doesn’t matter where you start but don’t try to get a jump off the line. There are a bunch of these old sandnecks that can tune an old motor with off-the-line acceleration like you’ve never seen. Those old boys like to play bumper cars for the first lap. Let ‘em. Half of ‘em don’t have sleds that will even finish the race and they know it.”
“Are you one of the old boys?” I asked suspiciously.
This brought an even brighter smile to her face. “No, you crazy off-worlder. I’m telling you straight. You watch. I’ll hang back two beats just like I’m telling you to. And if you can keep your crap together, feel free to tuck your nose in behind me and draft. I don’t mind well-behaved hitchhikers. Mess me up, though, and I’ll make it my mission to end your race.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Your crew treats us fair,” she said. “We put deliveries out there and you don’t try to stick us with extra fees because we live in the desert.”
I’d expected her to mention the Shala Tobek. It made me wonder just how close the rank-and-file Nodari were with the religious sect we’d run into. “This will be a big test for the copper you got me,” I said. “I hope it’s up to the task. Otherwise, I might be hiring you to haul me home.”
“Those ingots were ninety-nine-point nine eight percent pure. You do know copper is a crazy good conductor, right?”
“It’s rare and super expensive where I come from,” I said. “We didn’t use it much.”
She narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out if I was making it up. When she either decided I was on the up-and-up or at least believed my own words, she shook her head. “We used to have copper ore coming out by the bucket load. It’s not rare.”
“In your mine? What happened there? A cave-in or something?” I asked.
I studied her face, waiting for her answer. On cue, she momentarily grimaced. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Maybe we should make a side bet,” I said.
“Cocky, much?” she asked. “What’s your bet?”
“You place and beat me, I pick up food of your choice from one of our shipping destinations in the next two weeks,” I said. “If I place and beat you, you make my crew a traditional Nodari meal that isn’t gross.”
“So no snake entrail slaw or crow throat soup?” she asked, shaking her head like I’d insulted her heritage.
“Perfect examples,” I said. “I’m not sure why you’d want to eat that, anyway.”
“You jack-butted hare,” she said, her eyes fiery with irritation. “Just because we live in the desert doesn’t mean we’re savages.”
“Hey, I just said nothing icky. My folks make plenty of food that’d make you barf,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Worm meat pasta,” I said. “The worm is more like a snake but it’s small and you eat everything but the poop shoot and skin. They serve it with thick noodles and red sauce. If you don’t know what you’re eating, it’s not horrible. Once you know, it’s not going down without a fight.”
“They do not.”
“Ask Olivia about Onesk pasta. Just make sure you haven’t eaten first.”
“What kind of people are your parents? That’s child abuse.”
“Thank you. I agree,” I said. “Do we have a bet?”
“I’m asking your sister about the pasta, but I’m considering throwing this whole race out of pity right now so I can run home and make you a real meal,” she said. “That’s horrifying.”
“There’s no way you throw a race.”
“No. It was a nice thought though.”
A moment later, we received the call to move our racers into position. Up to this point, the plateau looked like a giant junkyard with racers, tenders, trailers, tents, sails, and more. A mini city had sprung up behind the starting line and the noise was tremendous as many sleds were loud. It made me wonder exactly what kind of propulsion they utilized.
With an entry fee of three hundred credits, there was no shortage of sleds moving between the two tall flags. Like the Limited races on Grünholz, there were all kinds of racers, from long, flat rails great on straight-aways but hell on turns, to squat, bulbous racers whose motors were hard to identify. Most sleds were similar to Smokey, roughly eight to twelve meters long, single cockpit affairs with adjustable airfoils to help in the turns.
I’d intentionally pulled to the line five meters from Carace’s sand-pitted but capable-looking sled. There was plenty of room along the line for all racers to have considerable room between them, which is why I was surprised when two loud sleds pulled up on either side of me, blocking my view of Carace.
Through the mirrored glass of my cockpit, I realized that their arrival was no accident. To my starboard side was Tsaki, the unpleasant man who’d harassed us on our first day on Curie, and on the portside was Hotak, an equally unsavory man.
A communication request came in from Tsaki. I considered ignoring it.
“Go for Hoffen,” I said, nervously monitoring gauges as I did before every race.
“They’ll never find your body,” Tsaki said. “The desert’s a big place.”
“Classy.”
An indicator showing that I had another comm coming in prompted me to switch channels.
“Are we too late?” Addy asked. “We’re ten minutes out.” Cassius had found a last-minute delivery and the three of them had decided to take it with the expectation that they’d be back in time for the Derby. Something must have gone wrong, but I didn’t mind. I was in my element.
“I’m at the starting line,” I said. “You should catch the last half of the race.”
The Derby was a long race, designed to stress poorly designed racers in preference over quick-footed but ultimately dangerous sleds. Carace’s warning still rattled around in my head and I wondered just what Tsaki and Hotak had in store for me.
“Hey, be careful Hoffen,” Carace called over a channel I’d left open. “Those guys mean business.”
“I figured. No sweat.”
“Racers, start your engines,” the announcer’s voice echoed loudly in the cockpit. I’d turned up the volume of the official channel so I wouldn’t miss it. I took the opportunity to turn it back to a normal level.
I blew out a nervous breath. Racing required that I perform a task that I loved at a high level. Mental mistakes often meant the difference between winning and losing. It would be helpful if I didn’t put so much pressure on myself, but I wasn’t sure how that worked. Aunt Marny would tell me to get out of my head. Yeah, right.
A countdown timer took over my main display. Glancing right and then left, I sensed what was coming and grinned. It wasn’t fair that I often received a warning of people’s intent before their actions, but then life isn’t fair, and I wasn’t about to ignore good information.
The countdown hit zero and I slapped my acceleration stick forward. Smokey jumped off the line with surprising agility. As quickly as I’d lurched forward, I jammed on gravity-assisted lifters beneath the sled and pulled hard on the airfoils. The move caused me to jump a dozen meters into the air and correspondingly caused my stomach to flip-flop as my inertial dampers struggled against the change.
As I’d anticipated, Tsaki and Hotak veered into my racing lane with their black-smog belching, oversized sleds. I couldn’t fault their machines for poor initial acceleration as they’d easily kept up with Smokey. What they hadn’t done was anticipate my nimble leap into the air. I cackled with joy as the two machines collided beneath me. I also knew better than to stick around to see how they’d fare, and pushed Smokey to maximum power.
