She kept the planet between her and the three Cathedral ships at all times. It was night beneath her, with no lights visible at all as she passed over the planet's equatorial ocean. A significant tropical cyclone was tearing across the body of water, a swirling vortex one hundred kilometres wide, picking up energy as it headed for one of the planet's major land masses. She'd studied it as she approached, its central eye and flailing arms reminding her strangely of the view of the galaxy from the Refuge. The storm was growing into a monster; there would be few carnival celebrations for people living in the coastal regions in its path.
The cyclone could, however, provide her with cover as she dropped to the surface. The eye of the powerful storm would give her an effective blind-spot from orbiting Concordance sensors unless they were positioned directly overhead, and the high winds and atmospheric disturbances would shield her lander from ground and air-based installations. Assuming she survived the journey through the maelstrom, she had a chance of reaching the surface undetected.
She gritted her teeth as she dropped to the surface, arrowing her way into the eye of the storm. The lander vibrated and boomed around her; it felt like it was going to shake her skeleton to its constituent bones. She forced herself to remain calm, breathe slowly. After everything that had happened to her, she doubted whether she'd ever find such journeys easy. Once again, she tried to occupy her mind by focusing on the lander's structural integrity readings and external sensor sweeps. It didn't help much: the storm meant that she was blind, too, and watching spreading amber alerts about depleting energy hull power levels did little to put her mind at rest.
Nevertheless, she fell out of the bottom of the hurricane still in one piece, plummeting into the turbulent depths of the night-time ocean. Now the water would shield her. She sank to two hundred metres, then set the lander to head west, away from the path of the hurricane and towards the continent upon which Senefore lay. She would be there in four hours, arriving just as the rays of the rising sun lit up the continent's mountain tops.
She picked a deserted beach and swam the last kilometre from the lander to shore. She instructed the craft to sink to the sea-bed and wait for her to return. Or, if she didn't reappear within two weeks, to attempt the journey back to the Dragon and away to the Refuge to report to Ondo.
Above the tide line, the sand beneath her feet retained some of its warmth from the day before, oozing pleasantly between her toes. This was a tropical continent in the middle of summer, and temperatures would rise sharply through the day. Ocean scents of salty water and rotting seaweed filled her nostrils. She worked her way up the beach towards a line of swaying trees, their curving trunks bare and their leaves high crowns of rubbery fronds. The shifting sand made for slow progress; it was like trudging through snow, but the warmth of the rising sun on her neck was pleasant, and the curious, questioning cries of unseen birds lifted her spirits in unexpected ways. Migdala was beautiful, and it was another planet that once she had never heard of and had had no way of visiting. The thought sent a grim smile across her face. Concordance had given her this.
She knew from Ondo's surveillance streams that she could skirt the impenetrable green wall of the rainforest ahead of her. Eventually, she'd reach scattered communities and tracks that would take her to the periphery of the continent's ground-transportation network. From there, she could slip into the crowds converging on Senefore.
Some aspects of the plan had troubled her. On Maes Far, she would have been spotted very rapidly if she'd attempted such a thing: everyone had simple tags embedded under their skin to grant access to buildings and transportation and for use in shops.
Ondo had assured her there would be no such problems on Migdala. “The world is more rebellious than Maes Far. People on Migdala wouldn't take kindly to being tagged and monitored, even if it would make life easier for them. So long as you're disguised and can pay, you should be able to use the transportation system without being spotted.”
“Unless they're looking out for me.”
“If they are, I doubt you'll get as far as a public e-track service.”
Her appearance caused no comment as she boarded one of the silver high-speed trains, mask in hand and sunglasses covering her eyes. There were one or two appraising glances from younger passengers, males and females so far as she could tell, but they were gazes of frank sexual appreciation rather than suspicion. This far from Senefore, at least, it seemed everyone was in party mood. Selene sat next to a mother and her young twins, both already wearing identical skull masks, excitement clear in their high voices. Selene found she could understand their idiom perfectly thanks to the knowledge she'd downloaded. That was good.
The mother smiled at Selene as she sat down but said nothing. She set about peeling a series of round, yellow fruits to give to her children, who crammed them into their mouths with clear relish. The train carriage filled up rapidly with boisterous, laughing people, young and old, and soon they were speeding their way westwards to the capital city. Selene stared out of the window as fields and rivers flashed by, her own reflected face projected onto the scene.
She wondered if Kane, the man who became a Concordance Void Walker, and who had tormented and killed her father, had ever walked down those roads, climbed those green hills. If, somehow, the places flashing by might
