“I have no idea. The Shimese testaments don’t mention what the Kryrk is actually made of. And when I held it, I couldn’t tell what it was made of. Could you?”
I shook my head. “Some kind of substance I’ve never seen before.” I remembered the Kryrk was smooth and hard with a translucence about it. And there were little motes of light flickering within it.
“Do you guys remember what my father’s last instructions were?” I asked.
Ana-Zhi looked down at the ground. “He didn’t want me to surrender to the Mayir, I know that. But, honestly, that might be our only way to stay alive. I still think we should keep that on the table.”
“He told us to find someplace remote, hide all the artifacts where the Mayir wouldn’t find them, and then scuttle the ship,” I said.
“Are you serious?” Narcissa asked.
“Yes.” I looked over at Chiraine and Ana-Zhi. Neither of them looked particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of dumping our cargo.
“Well, do you know what the artifacts are, at least?” Narcissa asked.
“No idea,” I said. “My father handpicked them during the seven years he spent in Bandala.”
“As a bot, right?”
I bristled a little. “It was my father’s consciousness in the bot.”
“That must have been extremely weird.”
“Tell me about it.”
Chiraine crossed her arms. “We can’t just dump the artifacts—”
“I agree,” Ana-Zhi cut in. “They’re too valuable to—”
“The Empire,” Chiraine said. “We need to get them in the hands of people who can study them. Determine if there is something there that will help us defend against the Mayir.”
“Wait a minute,” Narcissa said. “You think the Mayir are going to make a move against the Empire?”
I said, “You’ve been out of it for several years, so you probably don’t know this. But the Mayir have stepped up their anti-NH activities.”
“What do you mean?”
“A few years ago, they ejected all non-humans from Persis. Close to a million individuals. It actually hurt their economy, but they don’t care. This is kind of like a holy war for them.”
“It is exactly a holy war.” Chiraine’s eyes flashed with anger. “It’s Jarl Tuddon’s holy war. And he doesn’t just want non-humans off his planet, he wants them wiped out.”
I needed some more time to process everything, and I was still preoccupied by the thought of waking my father. I had talked it through with the others one more time.
Everyone agreed that it would be risky, but I could tell that everyone was excited. The possibility of the legendary Sean Beck joining the team might give us more of a fighting chance.
“Of course it’s your decision, Jannigan, but I’ll start digging around in the KB,” Narcissa said. “Just in case.”
“If we’re going to do this, we need to do it right,” Ana-Zhi added. “We’ve only got one shot at it.”
Yeah, I knew that. All too well.
“I’m going to go run that inventory,” I said.
“Do you want me to come with?” Chiraine asked, touching my arm.
“No, that’s okay. I need some time to think.”
I walked down to the galley, my mind racing. There was so much to try to make sense of. There were a lot of ways this could play out—and none of them good.
In the galley, I accessed the inventory system. I could have used any datapad on the ship, of course. But there was something satisfying about physically going to each storage locker and seeing for myself the items the information system displayed.
Unfortunately, the MCP weren’t as generous as the Shima when it came to food and drink stores. It looked like they started with a seven-day allotment for a crew of seven—49 units. According to the inventory report I just ran, there were 24 units remaining. Under normal circumstances that would last the four of us about six days. We could start rationing, of course, and probably could stretch that to twelve days.
I wondered if Ana-Zhi was right. Would the Mayir find us well before we ran out of food and water? That probably depended on what we did next.
If we followed my dad’s advice and hid the artifacts somewhere, at least we had a chance of keeping them out of the hands of the Mayir. That was something.
I kept coming back to what Narcissa had mentioned about the Coliseum. It had been picked clean by previous expeditions. Maybe the best hiding place for the artifacts was right here. Especially if we could unload everything and move the ship to another location far from here.
I rejoined the others and told them what I had learned about our food and water situation, and also floated the idea of hiding the artifacts in Umbanor.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Ana-Zhi said. “Especially if we end up captured.”
“Nice optimism,” Chiraine said.
“It’s called being realistic, princess.”
“I, for one, don’t intend to be captured,” Narcissa said. “At least not alive. I don’t think the Mayir would look too kindly on the person who shot up their patrol.”
“What do we know about this Coliseum?” I asked. “Is it really a coliseum?”
“No,” Chiraine said. “That’s just what the Viatani team called it. Let me see if I can find something in the system.”
While Chiraine worked, Narcissa called up the topo of our immediate vicinity. Surrounding the valley we were in stood tall mesas, buttes, spires, and needles of stone. On one particular butte—Umbanor—early Yueldians had built the Coliseum.
“Here we go,” Chiraine said. She sent an image to the main viewport display. It showed an aerial view of the Coliseum.
I looked a little closer and studied the image. There were hundreds of stone structures—arranged like a village around a massive circular courtyard.
“Is that a man-made lake there in the center?” I asked.
“Yes,” Chiraine said. “Fed by an extremely deep well—according to the report.”
“How old is this place?”
“Two thousand years, give or take. The ancient Yueldians were incredible craftspeople and engineers.” She zoomed in on some images of the structures.
Most were just shells of buildings, but you could tell that they had been precisely constructed from uniform
