Bellowing again, the scorpion creature clawed its way from the hill and turned towards me. Each of its six eyes was cold and black and alien-looking.
And then, impossibly, I heard a voice in my head, low and menacing.
You do not belong here, boy.
I had no idea where I was, but I knew the creature spoke the truth. I did not belong in this hellish place.
Instinctively, I backed away, but found myself right up against the edge of the ridge. A hundred meters below, streams of lava coalesced into bubbling pools of molten rock.
The creature advanced, tail cracking through the thick air like a mighty whip.
I will crush you. Tear you limb from limb. Feast on your flesh and suck the marrow from your bones. Whatever is left shall burn.
It jumped forward, moving fast—incredibly fast. The creature’s tail flew towards me and smashed into my chest.
I felt my bones break and my chest explode with pain and all of a sudden I was airborne. Hot, fetid air enveloped me as I tumbled back off the cliff, falling in slow motion.
I tried to breathe, tried to scream, but I couldn’t get my lungs to work. Darkness crowded my vision. But not before I glimpsed the scorpion creature flying at me, claw-like arms ready to tear me apart.
And then, mercifully, I woke.
“It’s okay, Jannigan. You’re okay.” Chiraine was there on the ground with me, cradling my head against her chest.
I felt her heart beating against my cheek, and then my own heart beating twice as fast.
“What was it?” she asked.
“Nightmare,” I said. “It felt so real.”
I told her about the volcanic landscape and the scorpion creature.
“It spoke to me,” I said. “Telepathically.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah. Very weird.”
Chiraine helped me to my feet and I took a couple of deep breaths to clear my head. My heart was still beating really fast. I could definitely use some glace right now to take me down a notch. But then I’d be dead to the world.
“Any luck with finding an interface?” I asked.
“No. We may have to try to fab something. And by ‘we’ I mean Narcissa.”
We decided to return to the bridge and see how she was doing, but instead we found her in engineering with the Rhya.
“Uh oh,” I said. “Bad news?”
“Actually, no. Just the opposite. The mimonite’s been extracted and I found the patterns for the discharge retainer, so that’s cooking now. Once it’s done, we’ll send in a wombat and get the module swapped out. If all goes well, we’ll be ready to leave in an hour or two.”
Chiraine’s face brightened. “That is good news.”
“Yes, I can’t believe how fast everything is. Back on the Valerius we didn’t have half the automated systems you have, and our fabbers were B3s.”
“B3s? You serious?” I remember my dad brought home a B3 nanofabrication forge when I was a kid and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.
“I’m perfectly serious,” Narcissa said. “It would’ve taken us a take a full day to create a module like this, and—”
She was interrupted by the Rhya floating past her and out into the corridor.
“Where’s it going?” Narcissa asked.
“No idea,” I said. “We were hoping there would be something in the inventory we could use as a comm interface so we could talk to it, but no luck so far.”
“I scoured the KB, but I don’t really know what I’m looking for,” Chiraine said.
“We need some sort of electromagnetic inductor. Once we’re underway I’ll check myself. In the meantime, someone want to show me how to work the galley? I haven’t had a decent cup of moxa in nearly twenty years.”
A voice at the doorway said, “A cup of moxa sounds damn good right about now.” It was Ana-Zhi.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Chiraine asked.
“Leg cramp,” Ana-Zhi said. “Initially. Then I wanted to make sure Qualt hadn’t succeeded in hijacking my ship.” She hobbled into the room.
“Technically, it’s his ship,” I said. “But I get your meaning. You don’t have to worry. He’s back in the brig.”
“Thanks to some fancy shooting by Ms. Narcissa here,” Chiraine said.
We got Ana-Zhi up to speed about what had happened while she was in the MedBed, including the news that we were an hour or two away from being able to leave.
“It begs the question,” Chiraine said. “Where exactly are we going?”
“Good question,” Ana-Zhi said. “The second we fly out of this cavern, we’ll light up the Mayir’s scanners. And there’s no way we’ll be able to outrun a squadron of stingrays.”
“So, what? We fight our way out?” I knew that wasn’t really an option.
“Does it make sense to just wait it out down here where we’re shielded?” Chiraine asked.
“No, eventually they’ll figure out where we are,” Ana-Zhi said. “The Mayir don’t give up easily.”
“I might have an idea,” Narcissa said.
Ana-Zhi turned to her. “Well? We’re listening.”
“Moxa first.”
Ten minutes later we were all seated around the table in the galley, which smelled of fresh-ground moxa. As I took a sip from my mug, I could tell the moxa wasn’t as good as what we had on the Freya, but it wasn’t the powdered crap either. We helped ourselves to Qualt’s breakfast stores as well, nibbling on muffins, seedcakes, and wellfruit.
After checking the Aura that she taken from Qualt, Narcissa announced that the fab would be done in twelve minutes.
“Well, you better talk fast,” Ana-Zhi said.
“Okay, how much do you all know about the topography of Yueld?”
“We really don’t have time for this, lady,” Ana-Zhi said. “Spit it out.”
I had a fair bit of knowledge about the planet implanted in my memory as part of the mission briefing. “We know that almost ninety-eight percent of Yueld’s surface is covered by water,” I said. “A little less than a quarter of that ninety-eight percent is wetlands: swamps, bogs, fens, and so on. Only two percent is habitable land.”
“The mesas,” Chiraine chimed in. “Like the
