Page 18 of Escape from Nova Nine
“Big fucking hole.” Lhap Cho’s voice seemed tighter than usual. “You’ll see.” A tinge of trepidation slipped past the guard’s habitual shield.
Not that she blamed him. She didn’t like the Abyss, either. The impossible winds felt too much like melancholic death ghosts who wanted her to join their ranks.
Zade, on the other hand, was barely containing his flare of curiosity. The man was more hopeful than an adventurous griffin, poking his beak into everything in case it turned out to be something edible.
Surviving another close call had made her realize they all might die before she even had the chance to explore the potential connection with Zade. Or to share a stolen kiss with him and ask if he wanted more. Somehow, in the last few hours, his irrepressible optimism had infected her. Waiting for the perfect opportunity hadn’t been working, so why not try the less perfect options?
Nova Nine might be killing her by centimeters, but she wasn’t dead yet. She wasn’t the leader Zade seemed to think, but damnit, she was Volksstam, not some soft CGC citizen on a fat planet waiting for another handout. She’d taken over maintaining the prisoner network from the Volksstam prisoner who’d looked out for her when she was a noob. Plus, she had resources and talents the greedy ghoul in red and his minions never dreamed of. It was about time she used them.
* * *
Their entry into the Abyss turned out to be through a temporary double airlock erected over a new jagged hole in an old corkscrew-shaped tunnel. She knew the tunnel was old because previous practice had been to smooth the dead rock walls after ore extraction, which left little dust. Nowadays, with water more plentiful, they didn’t bother.
Thanks to her filer memory, she would remember the route to the breach, but she didn’t have enough reference points to make her own map.
Lhap Cho anchored both her and Zade to the wall via monofibre cables that would slice through exosuits and their waists before breaking. He also supplied gravity boots, lights, and tethered cameras that sent a feed to Lhap Cho’s controller. Zade got some light climbing gear, and she got the comms scanner.
“Lunaso, you go first.” He opened the first airlock door and motioned Zade through. “Don’t trust the warped gravity plate on the left. It took out our flying camera.” The first door irised shut.
Zade nodded and gave a thumbs-up sign, then stepped into the darkness after the second door opened.
When Lhap Cho motioned her through, she told herself it was an ordinary walk in space, just like exosuits were designed to handle.
Her eyes needed several moments to adapt to the dark. The phantom lights she remembered seemed more plentiful in this area. Too easy to imagine they were stress fractures in an old ship’s hull. Focusing on Zade’s broad shoulders helped. She let herself find comfort in his emotional strength.
Zade keyed the light on his shoulder and aimed it to the right. The gravity plate beneath them curved ninety degrees up and more to the right. It connected to a twisting path of more gravity plates.
She pointed her own light to the left. The next gravity plate over looked like a torn tissue with a gaping black void between it and a farther row of plates. Even as she watched, dust whirled across her light’s beam. Lhap Cho would never see his camera again.
“Go right about five sections,”ordered Lhap Cho,“then run the scanner.”
The capricious winds pummeled them with dust and pebbles as they cautiously made their way along the metal path. The old-style plates only had embedded surface lights, not the pillar lights they now incorporated. The walkway followed the convoluted contour of the rock wall. No landmarks meant she was completely lost by the third twist. Their safety lines were their only way back to the airlock.
Her imagination supplied the howling sounds, even though her suit blocked the noise. She worried that Zade’s larger profile would make him more vulnerable to the gusts. Narrowing her focus to each step she took helped keep her brain occupied and fear at bay.
At the fifth plate, she gratefully hunkered down with the scanner. In the distance, a flattened sphere of small blue lights up and left seemed to be hovering in space. It looked familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Something someone described to her, maybe? She’d need quiet time to search her filer memory for the reference.
“Lunaso, I can’t see shit on your camera,”complained Lhap Cho.“Is it still on?”
Zade tapped the camera with his gloved finger. “It’s green go.”
“What about the scanner? I’m not getting that feed, either.”
Julke checked the controls. “It’s activated. It’s seeing our comms.”
It took her a second glance to realize it had been set to look for too narrow a wavelength band. They could be standing on top of a fully operational galactic comms relay and the scanner wouldn’t detect it. If she’d needed another nudge from the gods, there it was.
After another twenty minutes of navigating the twisting plates and getting no results, Lhap Cho ordered them to wait while he spoke to the techs.
Instead of hugging the wall to avoid the winds, Zade stepped toward the black void and dropped to one knee at the edge of the plate.
Julke wanted to look away, but she didn’t dare, in case she had to reel him in. The Abyss seemed like it wanted to play with its victims. Well, too damn bad. The guards had given him to her, and she was keeping him.
Zade waved to get her attention, then gave her the sign for griffin plus a waving motion she couldn’t interpret. Lip-reading wasn’t her gift. She shook her head and shrugged to tell him she had no idea what he was saying.
He stood and backed up a couple of steps, then dropped to his knees and sat on his heels. He almost looked meditative, but hisbekorensgavetalent blazed to life. It wasn’t directed at her.
In seconds, something white and fast swooped in and out of the light. Two more sped by. This time, she got a glimpse of wings. Rock griffins.
