She arched an eyebrow, an expression that Nickolai still didn’t quite know how to interpret. “Oh, really?”
“One of us can stay by the lifeboat, the other go out and—”
“Oh,
“You think I—”
“I’m not stupid, Nickolai. I know you don’t want to kill me, otherwise I’d be several flavors of dead right now. That does not mean I trust you.”
“Then what do you want
She sighed, and thought a moment. “If we’re lucky, another lifeboat put down in line of sight.” She glanced up at the trees. “Think you can get to the high ground with that arm?”
As large as the trees were, they were easy enough to climb. The bark was rock-hard and scaled in a semiregular pattern of hexagons that spiraled up the trunk. The six-sided plates were the size of Nickolai’s fist, and the gaps between them were more than wide and deep enough for him to insert his claws. Almost a ladder.
He pulled himself up the side, climbing up over a hundred meters until he got a good, mostly unobstructed, view of their surroundings. It helped that they landed on the side of a small mountain. He might not have climbed the highest tree, but the tree’s placement on the slope meant that he was hanging on above the tree line for most of the forest.
From his perch he had a good view to about 120 degrees’ worth of horizon before the mountain range behind him started interfering with his view.
Below him, Kugara shouted up, “What do you see?”
“Forest goes south all the way to the horizon. There’s a large body of water to the southeast, about sixty kilometers away at its closest, I’d guess. Down the shoreline I see some sort of settlement. It’s too far away to see details, but there are a few very large buildings.”
“How far?”
“Possibly a hundred and fifty klicks—it’s just at the horizon.” Of course, the estimate could be way off, considering he had no idea how big the planet was, and barely had a feel for how high above the forest he actually was.
“Anything closer?”
He shouted down an inventory for her. He could see a couple of spots of color which could be drag chutes caught in the forest canopy at fifty and sixty klicks. He saw a couple of large cleared areas that might have been signs of logging activity. Those were farther away, close to the settlement.
Southwest of them, Nickolai saw a closer scar in the woods. It almost seemed to be a scar from some oblique impact. But he could see some sort of structures dotting the clearing.
“How far is that?”
“Fifteen kilometers, twenty at most.”
“Okay, get a good bearing on that site. That’s where we’re going.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Mixed Blessings
Sometimes victory is simply deciding to act.
One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.
