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CHAPTER TEN

It took us about half an hour to find some heavy-duty line in one of the supply closets and dig out four empty water bottles from the trash bin. While I rigged up a traveling harness to anchor me to the line, Selene wove the bottles into the upper end for buoyancy.

Somewhere along the way I remembered the Barracuda maneuvering units lying in a pile halfway around the deck. But they were military-grade gadgets, I’d never used one before, and this didn’t seem like the right time for a practice run.

“All right,” I said as I fastened the other end of the line to the leg of one of the workstations. “That gives me fifteen meters out from the hatch. Enough to cover your estimate, plus a margin for error. A quick look around—a quick look,” I emphasized, noting the nervousness still in her pupils, “and then come back in. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said. She still didn’t like this, I knew, but knew it had to be done. “Give me two tugs on the line when you’re up, just so I know you’re safe. And if something goes wrong with your suit and the earbuds don’t work, give four sharp tugs on the line and I’ll pull you back.”

“Got it,” I said, noting the irony of the situation. All of modern technology at our fingertips; but if the earbuds didn’t function through ten meters of water, our backup plan was the ancient nonverbal techniques of Earth’s pre-spaceflight mariner past. “See you soon.” I sealed my helmet, knelt down, and opened the hatch.

Once again I was greeted by a surge of water. It churned for a moment, then settled down into a rippling puddle as the water pressure came into balance with Alpha’s gravity field. The puddle here was smaller and more shallow than the one that had invaded the airlock, I noted, a direct result of this hatch being higher up and the water therefore having less pressure to work with. I shoved the float end of the tether through the hatch, watched it disappear into the murky water, from my perspective looking as if it was going straight down.

“Any light?” Selene asked.

“Nothing I can see,” I told her. “But the water’s kind of cloudy, so that might not mean anything. Okay. Here goes.” Smiling encouragingly at Selene through my faceplate, I rolled through the opening.

I’d already noticed that the water seemed murky. It was only as I completed my exit and followed the buoys toward the surface that I realized part of the cloudiness was due to the fact that the water was both flowing and churning. Definitely a river, then. I tried to remember the images of Ixil’s target area, but aside from the mountains I couldn’t remember any topographic details.

All of which assumed we were even in that area, of course. If Tera’s calculations had been wrong, or if Ixil and Selene hadn’t fired the grav beams correctly, we could be literally anywhere on the planet.

Above me, the water was getting lighter as I neared the surface. But not all of the water. There was an odd shadow hanging over part of it, to my left as I faced downstream. A dock? A ship?

A large and hungry predator?

No way to know until I was there. Unfortunately, there was also no way to know if the plasmic belted at my waist would work after being immersed in water. I slowed my ascent, trying to figure out if the shadow was moving…

And then, with a muffled splash, I broke the surface.

It was a river, all right, flowing past me at a good clip. The shadow turned out to be coming from a five-meter-tall, shark-tooth-shaped rock poking out of the water to my left, its presence in the flow probably part of the reason for the turbulence I’d felt on my way up. The right-hand bank was about a hundred meters away, its edge thick with some kind of reedy plants. Beyond it in the distance I could see a line of grayish-brown mountains. The ones Ixil had been aiming for?

“Selene?” I called. “I’m on the surface. A river, not too wide, with a big rock in the middle that we seem to be pressed up against.” I paused. “Selene?”

Silence. Apparently, our fears about the earbuds not working through this much water had been justified.

No problem. Shark Tooth Rock was blocking my direct view of the left-hand bank, but it shouldn’t take long for me to maneuver around it and get a look at the other side. If I was lucky, I’d see the village or campfire or whatever had been showing the light that had sparked this operation in the first place. If not, Selene and I would have to start the tedious task of figuring out where exactly Alpha had landed. Either way, in a few minutes I’d be able to head back down and report to her in person.

I gave the line the two-tug all-clear signal, then unfastened my harness and hooked the buoy mesh around a convenient crag on the rock where the current wouldn’t carry it away. Holding onto the rock, keeping a careful distance from the jagged surface, I maneuvered around the upstream side to where I could see the bank.

And there it was. A village—a small city, actually—starting at the riverbank and extending inland a few kilometers along a low ridge that led in turn toward a set of forested foothills. Beyond the hills, I could see that the sun was close to the horizon, its reddish light peeking through the layers of clouds already forming above me. Morning or evening, though it wasn’t immediately obvious which it was.

Still, if those were the right mountains, and this was the right city, then that direction was west and it was evening. And if it wasn’t the right city, at least it had a similar weather pattern and geographical positioning.

So why had we seen only a single light? A city this size should have lit up the sky.

I looked back at the buildings closest to the river…and as I focused on them I felt a shiver run through me. All of them seemed to be in various stages of decay, from heavily dilapidated to barely identifiable piles of rubble. The structures at the other side of the city were too far away for me to see much, but from their asymmetric silhouettes against the distant hills I guessed most if not all of them were in similar shape. Whatever this city had once been, its glory or power had long since faded.

So if the place was deserted, why had there been any lights at all?

I looked up. I’d already noted that my rock had a rough, pitted surface where it stuck up above the water level, and that jaggedness gave it an abundance of hand- and footholds. If I was careful, I should be able to climb to the top without damaging my suit. Sliding back around to the rock’s far side where my progress wouldn’t be visible from the city, I picked out a pair of handholds and started up.

As anticipated, the climb was pretty straightforward. I reached the top, planted my feet securely on a narrow ridge, and eased my helmet over the top.

As my father used to say, Time is the best tool for altering someone’s perspective. If time isn’t available, try altitude. In this case, he was absolutely right. From my new vantage point I could see that, while the rest of the city was in much the same shape as the riverside section, there was an area of maybe fifty or sixty two- to four-story buildings in the center of town that not only weren’t heaps of ruins but also looked well-maintained and quite livable. They were grouped in a ring around a wide grassy area dotted with tall bushes and stands of flowers that looked like it had once been the city’s main park. In the center of the grass, where one might expect to find a statue or maybe a children’s adventure structure, was an ornate, brightly colored building shaped like a truncated cone towering over all its neighbors. Outside the park and functional-looking buildings, as if it had been set up to be the border between the good part of town and the ruins, was a ring of low hills.

So that was that. Mystery explained. A remnant of the city’s original denizens was still here, shining a light in forlorn defiance of the darkness.

It was depressing in the extreme. It also strongly suggested that this wasn’t where we should expect to find the RH directory Kinneman was hoping for.

Which he was only hoping for because I’d suggested it.

I sighed. No matter what happened from this point on, I might as well get used to living under a rain cloud.

Living under one, or possibly dying under one. Depending on how angry Kinneman was at what we’d done, there were probably two or three capital crimes he could legitimately charge me with if he felt like filling out the paperwork.

Assuming Alpha finally came back to life, of course. If it didn’t, Kinneman and his anger would be the least of my problems.

I focused on the ring of hills, trying to force my mind away from depressing thoughts of execution and exile. It was a bit difficult to tell from my low viewing angle, but they seemed to be too uniform in size and too precisely spaced to be natural formations. Burial mounds, maybe? The last resting places for whatever passed for kings here?

No. I’d met enough people of power to know none of them would settle for something so drab and commonplace. The big fancy central building was more likely where the high-priced crypts were located. Maybe the mounds were for the kingly spouses, servants, or pets.

Or maybe they were the tombs of enemies or former friends who’d fallen out of the king’s favor. It would make a certain amount of macabre sense for those graves to ring the town center as a warning to everyone else.

I was staring at the mounds, wondering if Kinneman had his own private morgue or if he would have to outsource my body to someone else, when I spotted movement along the riverbank.

Instantly, I ducked down, pressing my torso against the rock, leaving only my eyes and the top of my helmet still exposed to view. Half a dozen aliens had come into sight in the area beyond the ramshackle buildings, striding purposefully along a path through the reeds toward the river.

Whether or not those city mounds were tombs, the locals must have some place to dump dead enemies…and a lot of cultures included trespassers and spies in that category. The last thing I wanted was to find out the details firsthand.

Fortunately, for the moment the aliens didn’t seem to have noticed me. They were walking through the reeds, apparently aiming for a short stone dock I hadn’t noticed before that stuck a couple of meters out into the river.

I peered through my faceplate, wishing I’d tried to talk Kinneman into giving us Marine vac suits instead of these pitiful civilian things. Not only were the military versions fully armored, but they had a whole range of optical enhancements, from telescopic to infrared to starscopes. Here and now, all I had was my own eyeballs.

Still, the aliens were close enough for me to see that they were a species I’d never seen or heard of before: tall and lanky, their faces wide with long snouts, their entire bodies covered with armadillo-type scale armor. Their hands were wide, each with four fingers and an opposable thumb, like many of the Spiral’s bipedal species. Unlike those, though, these aliens’ hands had two long fingers and two much shorter, thicker ones.

Conventional wisdom among anthropologists and conmen was that reading a person’s clothing was the first step in evaluating and understanding that person and their culture. In this case, both of those groups would have had to be content with light browsing. Four of the six aliens wore long tunics with wide kilts below them that extended from waist to mid-calf. The other two were dressed similarly, but had added hats to the ensemble. The hats, at least, were moderately interesting: wide-brimmed, with tricorn-style points on four corners plus a pair of brightly colored feathers that rose from the front brim and crossed each other in a way that reminded me of a military rank badge. Those two aliens also carried flat boxes with top-mounted lids and handles.

Worst-case scenario was that this was a police or military patrol, sent to scout the city’s perimeter with an eye toward spotting intruders. Fortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case here. None of them carried obvious weapons, though it was possible they had small firearms tucked away out of sight. There was certainly nothing military I could see in their gait. Best guess was that they were fishermen heading for a dusk appointment with the local river trout.

They were approaching the last line of reeds when half a dozen ferret-sized creatures popped into view, scuttling enthusiastically around their feet.

My first reflexive thought was that they were some variant of Kalixiri outriders. But as one of the creatures turned around to look behind him I saw that, like the aliens themselves, these creatures had scales instead of fur. Pets then, joining their masters for the evening’s labors? The alien in the lead, one of the ones with a hat, reached the end of the reed patch and turned toward one of the others.

Abruptly, his head snapped back around, twisting back and forth as he gazed up and down the river.

I ducked out of sight, cursing myself for my carelessness. The sun was halfway down the horizon, but there was still enough light left to glint off my faceplate. Time to disappear into Alpha before he decided his eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on him and headed out into the water to investigate.

I climbed back down the rock as quickly as I could, grabbed the line and unhooked the buoy mesh from the rock. I attached my harness—

And stiffened. I’d looked straight at the city’s ring of mounds and even made some idle speculation on their purpose…only there was one, utterly logical, almost inevitable purpose that I’d somehow never even considered.

It was time to get back to Alpha, all right. It might even be too late.

* * *

Three hours later, I was once again rising through the dark water. This time, Selene was at my side.

I took the ascent slowly, painfully aware that if the alarm had been sounded there were likely to be patrols all along the bank. Even worse, if I was running security for the city, I’d have tagged Shark Tooth Rock as an ideal place to set up surveillance or a mid-river command post. The last thing I wanted was to bump into an anchored boat on my way up, or to grab for a handhold that was already serving as someone else’s foothold. I reached the surface and cautiously raised my eyes above the water.

Nothing leaped out at me, or dropped down on me, or screeched a warning at me. If the glint I assumed they’d seen earlier had indeed been spotted, apparently whoever was in charge had decided it was just a trick of the fading light.

Still, a minute of quiet recon was definitely called for. I worked my way around the rock, watching for boats or other signs of life. The clouds that had been gathering earlier had mostly dissipated, and while there was no visible moon the stars gave enough of a glow for me to see by.

There was also no light showing from the direction of the city. Whatever it was we’d spotted from orbit had either been a onetime event or something that was routinely shut down shortly after nightfall. Returning to my starting point on the eastern side of Shark Tooth Rock, I gave the double tug on the line that signaled Selene to join me.

A moment later, her helmet popped into view. I took her hand and guided it to a grip on the rock. “You okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” her voice came in my earbud. “Give me a minute to recover from the change in pressure.”

“No problem,” I said. “Nothing out there is going anywhere.”

“So you say,” she said, and I could imagine some crossness in her pupils. “You could have told me why you wanted me here, you know. Or you could tell me now.”

“I know, and I’m sorry to be so mysterious,” I said. “I just didn’t want to prejudice you by trotting out my own theories or preconceptions.”

“Preconceptions don’t affect me,” she said. “They’re not an issue with Kadolians. And it isn’t like this would be the first theory you’ve come up with.”

I winced. She didn’t actually add the words half-baked, but she might as well have. “I know,” I said again. “I just wanted to be especially careful on this one.”

“I understand,” she said, and I pictured her crossness fading a little. As my father used to say, Humans are a tightly wrapped bundle of contradictions and neuroses, and the sooner everyone else in the Spiral figures that out, the less annoyed they’ll be. Certainly Selene had had plenty of personal experience with that. “All right, I’m ready. Should I take off my helmet, or will opening the vents be enough?”

“Probably should do it full open-air,” I said. “Hang onto the rock and I’ll get it off you. And be sure to keep your shoulders well above the ripples. We don’t want water coming in your neck.”

Half a minute later, I had her helmet tucked under my arm. “Okay,” I said, watching her pure-white hair moving restlessly in the eddy breezes coming around the rock from the direction of the city. It looked even more ethereal than usual in the starlight. “Tell me what you smell.”

I held my breath as her nostrils and eyelashes began sampling the air. If I was right…

Abruptly, she stiffened. “Oh, Gregory,” she breathed. “Oh. No.”

I felt the knot in my throat tighten a little more. I’d hoped I’d been wrong. But I hadn’t. “They’re portals, aren’t they?” I said quietly. “All of those mounds. They’re portals.”

“I don’t know if it’s the mounds,” she said. “But there are definitely portals in or near the city. But it’s worse.”

I frowned. “Worse?”

She gave a long, lingering sigh. “I’m also smelling a human.” She seemed to brace herself. “And at least three Iykams.”

“Terrific,” I muttered, a hopeless, impotent rage settling into my gut. All the trouble we’d been through—crashing Alpha here, risking our lives, all of us including McKell and his friends hanging by our thumbs over a figurative lava pit. And all of it for nothing.

The Patth—the damned Patth—had gotten here first.

* * *

I don’t know how long we hung to the rock in silence, staring at nothing, wrapped in the starlit night and our own individual thoughts. A minute at least, maybe two. The only way the Patth could have gotten here was via a portal of their own, presumably popping into one of the ones Selene was smelling.

Which meant either they’d already taken possession of the portal ring or else had the necessary personnel and resources on the way. Even if Alpha came back to full function tonight—and Selene’s latest evaluation on that wasn’t very promising—I doubted Kinneman could throw together a team fast enough and big enough to do us any good.

“Okay,” I said at last, trying to filter the frustration out of my voice. “I guess we’re on to Plan B, then. Whatever the hell Plan B turns out to be.”

“Maybe not,” Selene said, her nostrils and eyelashes still working. “The human and Iykams were here. But I don’t think they are anymore.”

I frowned at her. “You’re joking. They found a whole ring of Icari portals and just left?”

“I agree, that seems strange,” she said. “All I can tell you is that the scents are weak, probably several days old. For whatever it’s worth, I don’t smell the kind of cooking or stored food odors I would expect if they’d settled in, either.”

“Okay,” I said again. “Well, I suppose that’s something. Anyone we know, by the way?”

“I can’t tell,” Selene said. “The scents are too weak to sort out from the native aromas layered in on top of them.”

“Understood,” I said. It was a frustrating scenario—more frustrating even for her than for me—but one we’d run into on more occasions than either of us liked. The only way around the impasse was to either get closer to the scent or to let her get familiar enough with the local unknowns that her brain could edit them out.

I leaned back a little to look around the rock at the dark and silent city. A sudden, unpleasant thought had just occurred to me. “Odd and slightly disturbing question,” I said. “What if the intruders are dead?”

“That depends on how they died,” she said, taking the question in stride. “The scent of blood is very distinctive and tends to linger. If they were stabbed or shot, I would probably know it. If they were choked or smothered, the signs wouldn’t be as obvious.”

“So, inconclusive.”

“From out here, yes,” she said. “When we get closer, I’ll be able to tell more.”

“You mean when we get closer to people who might have already taken out a human and some Iykams?”

“That’s one way to put it,” she said. “But I don’t smell firearm residue or the scorching and charring from plasmics or corona weapons.”

I frowned at the city. “Which is pretty off all by itself. It’s hard to imagine Iykams being chased out of anywhere without firing their weapons at least once.”

“Unless they were ordered not to.”

“There’s that,” I conceded, frowning as something belatedly struck me. “You said there’s human and Iykam scent. Did you forget to mention Patth scent? Or isn’t there any?”

She sniffed for a few seconds. “No, no Patth,” she confirmed, sounding puzzled. “There’s another group of aliens, probably the ones you saw earlier. But no Patth. You’re right, that doesn’t make sense. Why would there be Iykams and not Patth?”

“Because this wasn’t an invasion,” I said as the mix of details finally began to coalesce into something solid. “It must have been a quiet probe or scouting expedition. Nask sent in a human, probably an Expediter, along with an Iykam escort to take a look around. They did so—in fact, maybe they were the light we saw—then hightailed it back to report.”

“Yes, that would make sense,” Selene said. “If that’s true, what’s our response?”

I chewed thoughtfully at my lip. “I don’t see a lot of options,” I said. “We could wait for Alpha to reactivate and send for McKell and a bunch of EarthGuard Marines. Unfortunately, we have no idea when that might happen. We also don’t know what Nask’s schedule is. If we delay too long, we might roll up to the city to find the Patth already have it buttoned up.”

“You’re saying you and I are it?”

“For the moment, yes, I am,” I said heavily. “And given our lack of numbers and resources, I only see two possible courses of action. One, we walk into the city tomorrow in broad daylight and try to open a conversation. Two, we sneak in tomorrow night and…actually, I have no idea what we’d do in that one.”

“Well, we certainly aren’t going to sneak out with one of the portals,” Selene said, with a touch of dark humor. “I don’t think either option is going to get us very far, though.”

“I suppose that depends on whether or not the natives are friendly,” I said. “I guess we’re mostly talking recon mission.”

“Recon and first contact,” Selene said. “I’d say we go with your first option. At least walking in during the day doesn’t make us look guilty of something before we even meet them.”

“Not looking guilty is always a good way to start negotiations,” I agreed. “I suppose the other option is for me to walk in while you stay behind in Alpha. That way—”

“No,” she interrupted.

“That way,” I continued stubbornly, “you’d be able to give McKell a preliminary report when he finally shows up.”

“We can leave him a note,” she said. “We go in together, or we don’t go at all. Staying together was the fundamental reason we didn’t leave with Jordan and Ixil in the first place.”

I sighed. “Fine. My chivalrous side would object, but it’s too tired to argue. Let’s get some food, some sleep, some more food, and in the morning we take a swim. Hold still and let me help you get your helmet back on.”

She was silent while I reattached her helmet and checked the seals. “Looks good,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Yes,” she murmured, her hand still gripping the rock. “Gregory…you said they had scales like armadillos?”

“That’s what they looked like from here, yes,” I said, wondering why she was bringing this up now. “Why?”

“Just getting it clear in my mind,” she said. Letting go of the rock, she took hold of the line and started pulling herself down toward Alpha.

It was only as I began to follow that it occurred to me that right now, in the darkness of night and with our helmets in place, would be the only time she could ask a question and know that I couldn’t read anything in her pupils.

And the question she’d chosen to ask was about the aliens in the portal ring.

She didn’t talk much about her past, or the past of her people. But there’d been a few times she’d mentioned Kadolian stories and legends. None of them had struck me as being either good or pleasant memories.

I wondered if any of those legends talked about scale-armored creatures.



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