“They’re waiting for you. Plus, we can’t find the Rhya.”
Great.
As we left the crew quarters I asked Chiraine if anyone had seen any sign of the Mayir. According to my calculations, it had been at least twenty-four hours since our encounter with them in Roan Andessa.
“All clear,” she said. “Narcissa has shut down the non-essential systems to minimize our energy signature. And we’re still deep in the mist.”
That was a relief. But I couldn’t believe that they’d give up on us.
We searched for the Inspector as we walked, calling out, but there was no sign of it.
Ana-Zhi and Narcissa sat with cups of moxa in the engineering bay, deep in conversation.
“There’s sleeping beauty!” Ana-Zhi said. “Good nap?”
“Very funny.” I turned to the work table, where a bunch of components were haphazardly strewn about. In the center of the table was an assemblage of parts that could have been anything, but was probably the comm module that Narcissa had built. “Is this it?”
“Yeah, we’re just waiting for the subject to show up, so we can test it.”
I nodded. “Good work.”
“It was easy,” Narcissa said. “This ship has just about everything.”
“Except a spare discharge retainer,” Ana-Zhi said.
“They never do.”
“So, are we going on a Rhya scavenger hunt, or what?” Chiraine asked.
8
It took the four of us close to three hours to search all four levels of the Vostok. We eventually found the Inspector in a processor rack in the science station on the top level. I wasn’t sure what it was doing there.
“Inspector,” Narcissa said. “We have some equipment that will allow you to communicate with us. Please accompany us back to engineering.”
The Rhya ignored her.
“Can it even sense sound waves?” Ana-Zhi asked.
“Yes,” Narcissa said. “I’m positive it can hear and understand us.”
“Then why is it ignoring us?”
“No idea.”
“Higher intelligence,” I said.
“Exactly,” Chiraine said. “Remember, to the Rhya, we’re barely sentient.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes I feel barely sentient,” Ana-Zhi said. “What do we do now?”
“We leave it alone,” Narcissa said. “It will let us know when it wants to communicate.”
As we walked back to the bridge, Chiraine asked if anyone knew the biological requirements of the Rhya.
“Is it hungry? Thirsty?”
“No idea,” Narcissa said.
“Me neither,” Ana-Zhi said. “I’d imagine it might be more eager to communicate with us if it needed some food, though.”
I searched my memory for anything relevant, but nothing specific about the Rhya had been implanted for me. Of course, I didn’t know much more about them than anyone else did. They left our species alone and we left them alone.
The general consensus among our xenologists was that the Rhya were observing our civilization and acting as caretakers for certain worlds. Other than that, they didn’t really get involved in our activities.
“Speaking of food,” Chiraine said, “how long will our stores last? It’s been ten days since we came through the Fountain.”
“Every company is different,” Ana-Zhi said, “We stocked two weeks of food and water on the Freya. Who knows what Qualt did?”
“We need to run an inventory report,” I said.
“As long as you don’t start rationing the moxa,” Narcissa said.
“No, Jannigan’s right,” Chiraine said. “We have to know where we stand.”
“The way I see it, the Mayir will find us before we run out of food,” Ana-Zhi said. “It’s just a matter of time before they send drones out to every known site on the planet—and the moons.”
“Are we sure about that?” Chiraine asked.
“What are you talking about?” Ana-Zhi asked.
“Well, they didn’t come here looking for us, right? They came here to pillage. Isn’t that what Qualt said?”
“Not in so many words, but yes.”
“And they probably have a limited window to pillage.”
“Why do you say that?” Narcissa asked.
“Think about it,” Chiraine continued. “The Mayir killed hundreds of Rhya, and the Rhya are out for blood. Figuratively speaking. They are probably moving against Persis as we speak. And they’ll be doing everything they can to get back here.”
“That’s assuming that the Rhya know who was responsible for the attack,” I said. “And even if they did, the Mayir would deny it. They would say Qualt was acting on his own.”
“And the Rhya couldn’t get back here even if they wanted to—not without dark space beacons,” Ana-Zhi said.
“Go ahead,” Chiraine said. “Depress me even more.”
“What was your point, though?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I was just thinking that maybe the Mayir might be more focused on collecting artifacts—which is why they are here. If there’s a time constraint, maybe they’d deprioritize going after us.”
“I can’t see it,” Ana-Zhi said. “Sure, the carrier will be focused on clearing out the known sites: Iotan, Darot, Mygerria, Chando, Roan Andessa, and Bandala, of course. But they’d still deploy some of their stingrays and drones and whatnot to find us. Don’t forget, we have one of their ships. And they may even know that we have a hold full of artifacts.”
Chiraine nodded. “Once they access the Ambit, they’ll know that for sure.”
A stab of anguish hit me as I thought of the Sean bot. He had done his best to save some of the artifacts from Bandala, loading them onto the Vostok. Then he tried to sacrifice himself and activate the Kryrk to destroy Bandala and everything on it. All to keep the rest of the artifacts out of the hands of the Mayir.
And it had almost worked.
With everything else that had gone down, I hadn’t really thought about the biggest mind freak of all: the Kryrk really was an ancient weapon. And it could summon asteroids.
“They also know that someone found the Kryrk,” I said.
“How can you be so certain?” Narcissa asked.
“They saw an asteroid appear out of nowhere and they saw that it was going to hit Bandala. That’s why they nuked it. Ergo someone used the Kryrk.”
“Do you think it’s in their possession now?” Chiraine asked.
“You tell me.”
“What do you mean?”
I had that lump in the pit of my stomach again. “My dad said if something went wrong, he’d self-destruct.
