“Exactly,” I said.
“Yeah, we know we’re on a swamp planet,” Ana-Zhi said. “What are you proposing? Hiding in the mud?”
“Not mud exactly,” Narcissa said. “Mist.”
I remembered when we first found the cavern, the thick mist had messed with our scanners.
Now Narcissa explained why. “It’s not just normal water vapor. We tested it during our mission.”
“Oh?” Ana-Zhi said.
“There are microscopic silicate chondrules suspended in the mist. That’s what messes with the scanners.”
“So we stay in the mist and the Mayir can’t see us?” Ana-Zhi asked.
“Probably,” Narcissa said. “Any orbital scans won’t be able to penetrate. They’d have to run IR scans within a couple hundred meters of us.”
“What about low-frequency?” I asked.
“Sure—if they had it. I don’t think the Mayir will be setting up any LF installations any time soon.”
“Guys, are you forgetting about the wildlife down here?” Chiraine said. “Last time we barely made it through alive.”
“Well, I can’t speak to that,” Narcissa said. “But if we can get to Umbanor, we’d be able to lay low for a while. Maybe get that comm interface set up.”
“Umbanor?” I racked my brain to try to recall what she was talking about. Then it came to me. The Coliseum of Umbanor was one of the first Yueldian sites studied when the Rhya opened the world up.
“There’s nothing there,” Chiraine said. “It was cleared out in ’22.”
“Yes,” Narcissa said. “By Viatani, for the MCP.”
“And didn’t Allegro go back there in ’29?” Ana-Zhi asked.
Chiraine said, “That was a Shima expedition. I spent several months combing through Allegro’s reports. It was a big goose egg. There was nothing left to find.”
“Exactly,” Narcissa said.
“I don’t get it,” Chiraine said. “Then why go there?”
I understood Narcissa’s logic. “That’s exactly why we should go there. The Mayir know that there’s nothing of value in Umbanor, so they won’t waste time looking.”
“Unless they are looking for us,” Ana-Zhi said.
Narcissa popped a piece of muffin into her mouth. “Which is why we have to stay in the mist.”
“Again, I have to bring up the megafauna,” Chiraine said. “We’ve already had run-ins with a cthulian and a K’Lortai Dragon.”
“I’m with the princess here,” Ana-Zhi said. “How far away is this Coliseum?”
“We’d have to plot it out,” Narcissa said. “But it’s in this hemisphere. What do you say, Captain?”
Everyone was quiet for a moment. Then Ana-Zhi looked at me and said, “Well?”
I took one last sip of my moxa and said, “I don’t think we have a choice.”
Narcissa ran full diagnostics on the power weave and pronounced the ship good to go. The discharge retainer had been refabbed and installed and was working fine.
“I’m just going to run some more preflights and get the lay of the land and we should be ready to depart soon.”
She had plotted a course to Umbanor, which was located in a deep valley in a mountainous area approximately fourteen hundred kilometers away. Flying through normal atmosphere, we could make it in less than 90 minutes. Dodging dragons and cthulians and navigating through mist-obscured chasms would add a lot of hours to the journey.
But we were out of options.
“What are we going to do with Qualt?” Chiraine asked.
“Feed him to the dragons,” Narcissa offered.
“No,” Ana-Zhi said. “He’s an asshole, but he doesn’t deserve a fate like that.”
“Then what? A quick bullet to the head?”
“I’m inclined to leave him here,” Ana-Zhi said. “Maroon him, like the old pirates used to do.”
“What old pirates?” Narcissa asked.
“You ever read Treasure Island?”
“Never heard of it.”
Ana-Zhi rolled her eyes. “Savage.”
“What about you, Jannigan?” Chiraine asked. “How do you feel about marooning Qualt?”
Honestly, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It was almost certainly a death sentence. Unless the Mayir came down the shaft and found him, he’d starve to death—or be eaten by a wandering cthulian. Still, we couldn’t keep him imprisoned forever.
“Let’s do it,” I said. “We’ll leave him some food and water. No weapons.”
“It was traditional for pirates to leave their marooning victims a pistol,” Ana-Zhi said. “In case they wanted to take the easy way out.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
Once Narcissa confirmed that we were ready to set off, I accompanied Ana-Zhi to the weapons locker, where she picked out a particle carbine with some tranq rounds. Then we made our way to the brig.
“Holy shit,” Qualt exclaimed when he saw me. “Remind me not ever to get in a scrap with you again, kid. You’re a freakin’ monster. Where’d you learn to tussle?”
Then he caught sight of Ana-Zhi’s weapon.
“What’s going on, A.Z.? You here for a little payback?”
“Something like that, Qualt.”
“I would never plug you with anything stronger than a trembler, darling. You know that. You and I are professionals. We’ve got a code.”
“Uh huh.” She raised the carbine, clicked it into single shot mode.
“Seriously, Ana-Zhi. You do not want to do this.” His face blanched with fear.
“Hey Qualt, you ever read Treasure Island?” I asked.
“What?”
Then Ana-Zhi tranqed him.
The Vostok glided off into the mist. When I left the bridge, Ana-Zhi sat in the pilot’s chair, Narcissa was glued to the multiband, and Chiraine kept watch on the main viewport and optical scanner array. The Rhya was nowhere to be found. We had all decided to let the Inspector be until we had some way of communicating with it.
Moving quickly, I climbed the ladder to the gun turret, and scrambled into the swing seat.
“You in place?” Ana-Zhi’s voice sounded in my earpiece.
“Yeah—just extending into firing position.” The turret ratcheted out. Under normal conditions, I might have a pretty good view of what was in front of the ship, but all I could see was dense white mist.
My heart thundered in my chest as I checked the weapon controller. Despite being a Scout, the Vostok was armed to the gills with a void cannon array, ion lances, and kinetic torpedoes. I readied everything, and double-checked the daisy-chain targeting system for each of them. Thankfully, everything was working in sync and the AI-assist confirmed that all weapon systems were
