I’d hold the void cannons and ion lances in reserve, because their energy signatures would be most obvious to anyone scanning the area—even with the protective cover of the mist. The torps were our weapon of choice, but still, I was hoping we wouldn’t have to use them.
“Are we there yet?” I joked.
“Almost,” Ana-Zhi replied. “Just ten or twelve more hours.”
She was exaggerating, but not by much. When Narcissa plotted the course to the valley which held Umbanor, she estimated that it might take half a day to reach it.
I didn’t envy Ana-Zhi. She was basically flying half blind through the thick mist. And even though the plates were fully-charged, we knew how bad a collision with a cthulian or a K’Lortai Dragon would be.
That was why she had to take it slow—and why I had to be ready to blast anything big coming our way.
During the first several hours, we only saw a handful of gigantic creatures. The two cthulians on our scanner kept their distance from the ship, thank Dynark. The other creature we encountered was a 200-meter-long armored gastropod known as a Jarnaq worm. Thankfully, it was a slow-moving creature more interested in eating slime from the surface of the swamp than paying attention to the Vostok.
We were almost at our destination when we picked up a K’Lortai Dragon. It was feasting on another large reptile, so we steered around it.
“I’m almost tempted to get close to it and take a peek,” Narcissa said in my earpiece. “I’ve never seen a big one before.”
“Uh, that’s a negative,” I replied.
We had run into K’Lortai Dragon soon after we arrived on Yueld. The winged saurians were native to Gilaa, and Ana-Zhi speculated that the dragons here might have been illegally introduced by the Gilaan expedition of 2539.
“We’re coming in on sector 92,” Ana-Zhi announced.
“The trick will be finding a way in,” Narcissa said.
“That’s your job,” Ana-Zhi said.
I had a datapad running topographics which I was using to monitor our progress. Sector 92 was filled with a maze of mountains. Somewhere in the middle of them was a deep valley which contained the Coliseum of Umbanor.
It took us another hour to find an entrance to the valley. If we didn’t need to worry about being scanned, we could have just flown up over the mountains, and then down into the valley, but we were still trying to fly under the radar—literally.
There were a few tight squeezes through tall narrow canyons, and once we found ourself in a dead end and had to backtrack, but eventually we made it to the valley.
If anything, the mist was even denser here. All I could make out through the hyaline panes of my turret enclosure were the faint shapes of trees.
“Be patient, kids,” Ana-Zhi said. “We need to find a clear spot to set down.”
She circled the valley for another ten minutes, before setting us down on a rocky outcropping five hundred meters below the Coliseum itself.
I felt the landing gear make contact with the ground and we all let out a spontaneous cheer.
“Well done, Ana-Zhi,” I said. “I need to buy you a beer or something.”
“Beer? Try a bottle of Iorlian green. Maybe even a case.”
“Done.”
I retracted the turret back into its normal position and rejoined the others in the bridge.
Since it had been over 24 hours since everyone but me had time to sleep, I took the first watch, slumped in the pilot’s chair, while the others slept in their cabins for a few hours.
Chiraine relieved me three hours later. Her hair was tousled and her eyes were still heavy with fatigue, but she smiled at me anyway. Some people were just like that. Happy on the inside. No matter if they were stranded on an alien world three billion light years from home.
Lir definitely was not that way. She was on the high-strung side—pretty much always cranked up to eleven. Even when she was asleep, she was like a bomb ready to go off.
But Chiraine was different. Way different.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
I felt my face flush. “Sorry. Just zoning. Sleepy.”
“Well, that’s why I’m here. Get some rest.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I napped for a while before we left.”
“Yeah, from what I saw, that wasn’t a particularly restful sleep. Go ahead. I’ll come get you in an hour.”
She was right. I was exhausted.
“Thank you.” I left Chiraine in the bridge and headed down to the crew cabins. Before crashing out, I checked on my father again.
Once we confirmed that the Vostok’s power weave was stable again, Narcissa had helped me hook up his exosuit to auxiliary power.
The displays all looked good, and my father slept peacefully in his suit, cradled in the bunk’s webbing.
I gently touched the visor.
“I’ll get you out of this, Dad. I swear.”
I still wasn’t sure how or when, but I would.
The cabin next door was empty, so I stripped off my clothes, stretched out on the bunk, and closed my eyes. Sleep didn’t come immediately, but I was used to that. Sometimes even when I was dead tired, I had a hard time falling to sleep. Especially without drugs.
I was also a little freaked. What if I had that dream again? I wasn’t eager to relive my encounter with that giant telepathic scorpion creature. That was for sure.
Fortunately, I managed to doze off into a dreamless sleep. At least, I didn’t remember any dreams. I just kind of passed out and stayed that way, until a gentle hand on my shoulder woke me.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Chiraine said.
I blinked away the sleep from my eyes. “Hey.”
“So, good news.”
“Oh yeah?” I forced myself to sit up.
“Narcissa built a comm interface for the Rhya.”
“What? When?”
“It only took her four hours.”
“How long was I asleep?”
She checked her Aura. “Nine hours. Well, closer to eight and three-quarters.”
I bolted out of the bed. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I tried, Jannigan. You were really out of it.”
This wasn’t good. I pulled on my clothes. “So
