Page 110 of Shadows of Stardust

I give my cuff one last check, and the nearest guard is even further away now, still walking in the opposite direction. Even so, we both duck low on the craft, keeping behind the front dash as Roslyn expertly steers it out of the yard and toward the jungle.

We plan to follow a wide, winding river that cuts through that jungle all the way to the village. It’s the best route, giving us plenty of room to navigate above the water, even if it leaves us more exposed than if we were to travel through the cover of the trees. But with the size of the craft and the lack of any established routes through the thick underbrush, the river route will have to do.

It only takes a few minutes to navigate from the craftyard to the riverbank, and as soon as we’ve cleared sight of the yard, we both rise from our crouches. Roslyn gives the craft a little more speed, and we’re off.

Neither of us has much to say as we travel deeper into the Eritin wilderness, beyond brief confirmations of the route and estimated time of arrival.

Roslyn stays steady at the steering column while I keep my eyes trained on the surrounding jungle. I’m armed only with one paltry weapon—a blaster that can stun, but won’t provide much more offensive capability if we run into trouble.

We’re not going to run into trouble.

I keep reminding myself of that, silently repeating it like a mantra as the hover glides swiftly over the river’s curves. Eritin is not home to any large predators that would pose a threat, and by all indications, the village we’re headed to is peaceful as well.

It was originally founded as a scientific colony, its inhabitants sent to study the planet.

Eritin itself is owned by a confederation of large, multi-galactic corporations, and might have gone the route of complete colonization if the interests which run Mate Match and dozens of other vidcomm shows hadn’t been so invested in keeping it a private, pristine location for filming.

By agreement with the original scientific colony, they were allowed to stay even when the show’s production kicked off in earnest. Their existence here is still loosely governed by the corporate overlords who own the planet, but as far as I can tell, they’re allowed to live mostly in peace.

There’s not much more available on the universal comms networks about the current inhabitants, which isn’t a complete surprise. It’s a small colony, hardly noteworthy.

On any other day, it would hardly be a blip on my radar.

No threats here I couldn’t handle, a mission I could run in my sleep.

But with Roslyn beside me, the calculus has changed.

Because even though I know she’s more than capable of being on this mission with me, and even though the possibilityof danger is negligible, it’s not zero. And that tiny sliver of possibility that something might go wrong means I can’t relax, not for a second.

It’s as much of a surprise as anything else, this fierce protection I feel. This deep responsibility to make sure Roslyn gets where she’s going and back unscathed. I feel it to my marrow, the importance of what we’re doing today and what my true mission here is.

Give Roslyn whatever she needs.

Whatever backup, whatever protection, anything I can do to make sure all her planning and all her bravery, everything she’s done and sacrificed to be here, isn’t for naught.

The journey to the village takes just under an hour. In that time, we pass through more of this planet’s stunning wilderness as the river meanders through sections of thick jungle interspersed with coastal plains—vast stretches of marshy wilderness where brackish water and tidal cycles create a biome filled with life. Birds circle above and small creatures occasionally dart in and out of the reeds along the river bank.

Overhead, the sky remains heavy and gray, but the promised storm refuses to break.

Rain would be better, and certainly, there’s nothing we can do or could have planned for where the weather is concerned. But the oppressive weight of the clouds above, of the threatening rain and distant rumbles of thunder, doesn’t sit well with me. It’s the waiting, the whisper of something yet to come. Some eventuality we haven’t planned for, some threat waiting to jump out and catch us off-guard, that has my muscles tense with anticipation, mind racing.

Foolish, all of this worry, but I can’t shake it. I’ve got the feeling I won’t be able to relax fully until we’re back on the Mate Match beach, safely tucked into the bungalow, the day’s events behind us.

A few more minutes pass, and just as I check the map one last time, the village comes into view around a bend in the river.

It materializes from the dense jungle like it’s a thing of nature itself. All its structures are built in perfect harmony with the surrounding environment—rising organically from the riverbank, or wrapped seamlessly around the trunks of towering trees—it takes my eyes a few moments to fully comprehend what I’m looking at.

A marvel of technology and craftsmanship, it’s clear that whoever built it had an eye for symbiosis with the Eritin environment.

It doesn’t take long for our craft to draw notice. On the riverbank, a villager darts away from the water and between two of the structures built into the hill, obviously off to raise some kind of alarm. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.

“Down,” I say to Roslyn. “They may not take kindly to outsiders.”

We both duck low behind the hover’s dash, and Roslyn eases back on the throttle as we come in for our final approach.

It’s quiet, too quiet, like the village is as wary of us as we are of it. I half-rise from my crouch, eyes darting from structure to structure searching for any threat, hand resting on the useless stun blaster at my waist. I won’t pull it if I don’t need to—entering a situation with a weapon drawn causes more harm than good when the aim is amicable diplomacy—but my fingers twitch, nonetheless.

That twitch nearly becomes a fast draw as a male figure steps forward, out of the structure on the bank that seems to serve as a docking area for rivercrafts.

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