“The Well of Forever connects with this.” The display changed to a machine-generated readout. “An EMR scan of the mesa. See here? This is a lava tube. It forms a natural shaft. Straight down. And this thing at the bottom. It’s a cave.”
“What are we talking about, size-wise?” I asked. I was trying to make sense of Chiraine’s various charts and maps and scans.
“The EMR shows the mesa to be 625 meters high. Shaft itself runs 590 meters. That’s not bad.”
Yates shook his head. “It doesn’t matter how high the mesa is. There’s no way to get to that cave entrance. If it even exists.”
“Why’s that?”
“The local megafauna,” Yates said. “Cthulians. Nearly wiped out the 2322 mission.”
I wracked my brain for any knowledge of cthulian. Luckily Piettow had implanted something about the creatures. I closed my eyes and recalled what I knew.
Cthulians were gigantic swamp-dwelling bipedal carnivores. Vaguely humanoid in shape but with a squid-like head from which sprouted a mass of tentacles. Their appearance was reptilian, with a thick scaly skin, heavily-muscled limbs ending in three-toed claws, and vestigial appendages that resembled small wings emerging from their shoulder area. Stretched to their full height, cthulians reached around 100 meters—although apparently they rarely stood straight up on their hind limbs.
“Yeah,” I said. “We don’t want to mess with hundred meter tall giants.”
“Really, Captain?” Ana-Zhi Agrada taunted. “These cthulians are only a class 6 hazard. If there’s no other way into the city, I’m not sure we have a choice. At least according to the mission protocols.”
“You ran mission protocols on this?” I hadn’t pegged her for a by-the-book kind of person. Especially one who would throw protocols back in my face.
“Just doing my job, Captain. It turns out that the chance of us encountering a cthulian is less than twenty percent. Apparently there’s not a large population of the beasties. So what do you say?”
Both Chiraine and Yates looked at me expectantly.
“I need to think about this for a bit.”
“Don’t take too long,” Ana-Zhi said. “The Mayir and Faiurae are bound to notice if we hang around Roan Andessa.”
“As will our Rhya friends,” Yates said.
I walked over to the main hold to consult with Xooth and Obarral, but only the little Plargond was around. He was stretched out on a bench, dozing, but snapped awake when I walked close to him.
“Where’s Obarral?”
“Infirmary. Checking supplies. I think he thinks you will get injured soon. Wants to be ready. Not good to have dead captain, right?”
“Injured? Me? What are you talking about?” It took me a few minutes to realize that this was an example of Plargondian humor. Ha ha.
“I need your opinion on something.”
“Yes?”
I explained about our need to access the node in Roan Andessa, and Chiraine’s idea to use a lava tube to covertly enter the city. Xooth nodded but didn’t say anything. Then I told him about the cthulian hazard, and brought up Ana-Zhi Agrada’s mission protocols.
“We not use those!” he cackled. “Stupid.”
“The protocols?”
“I have own protocols!” He jabbed at his head.
Yeah, think for yourself. I get it. “What do you think of the plan overall?”
“Could work. If caves are clear. Six hundred meters you say? We take sled. Shoot straight up like a yastnod.”
I wasn’t sure what a yastnod was, but the idea of taking a sled made sense—depending on what we had on board. I knew that a good-sized hover-sled could haul a couple of crew members plus whatever equipment was needed. And if its z-field generator was tuned properly, there was no reason the sled couldn’t ascend 600 meters.
“Wear exosuits to be sure, but no problem. I think.”
“So you think we should do it?”
“That’s why we here, right? Find Kryrk. Get rich. Then spend more time sleeping, okay?”
I found Ana-Zhi Agrada in her quarters and told her that I had made a decision. We would send a team to explore the lava tube and enter the city through this Well of Forever that Chiraine had located.
“Well done, Captain. Exactly the decision I would have made. Now have you given some thought about who should go?”
I hadn’t, but it seemed pretty straightforward. “Yates, obviously. Xooth as well. Just in case there’s any trouble. Chiraine, so she can lead them to the node.”
“You started off well enough with Yates and Xooth,” she said. “But the princess isn’t allowed in the field. She’s too valuable.”
“How will we find the node, then?”
“She can brief Yates on the location. He’s studied the city data as well and can get to where he needs to go. We’ll also want to send Galish to drive the sled because I’m ninety-eight percent sure that Yates would wrap it around a stalactite or something.”
“Agreed.”
“That just leaves one more slot. Supervisory in nature.” Ana-Zhi stared right into my eyes.
“Me?”
She barked out a laugh. “No, not you! As far as I’m concerned you’re as much a princess as Chiraine. No, you’re staying right here. I’m going myself. I’ll run the mission and keep the boys out of trouble. Like I usually do.”
That was fine with me. I didn’t sign up for anything beyond hanging out on the ship for three days and acting like I was in charge.
“If we wipe, Obarral can get you back home to your Uncle Wallace.”
“What do you mean wipe?” That must be some spacer lingo that I wasn’t familiar with.
“I meant if we don’t come back, Obarral will be your ticket out of here. But let’s not dwell on that unfortunate possibility.” She looked up at a nav display which displayed the Freya’s position on the planet. “It looks like we’re almost there.”
We returned to the bridge and I watched as Ana-Zhi activated the Freya’s lower hull cameras and sensors. The bridge’s main display split, showing various angles of what we were flying over. But it was fairly disappointing. You couldn’t see much beyond a sea of swirling mist, occasionally punctuated by a jungle-covered mesa or rocky peak.
Yueld was a swamp planet, mostly unsuitable for habitation by anything other than
