Page 12 of Stellar Drift
Phen turned her attention to the quiet corner.“Sairy, you know the mountain area best.How long a trip are we talking?”
“What?”Sairy looked up, seemingly startled out of a deep thought.“Uh, maybe three days.”She gave her head a small shake, as if to clear it.“I haven’t seen the highest elevations.The cloud forest is kind of eerie.”
Koda turned her considerable charm on Sairy.“We’d love to have you come with us.We’d get your excellent company, and you could improve your maps.And we can help the Ranger do the right thing, even if his boss won’t.”She offered an inviting smile.“What do you say?”
Sairy’s face remained unreadable.At her silence, Houyen’s newfound hope began to sink.He was increasingly certain he was the problem.She wouldn’t go if he were part of the expedition.The thought that his presence was a deal-breaker stung more than he cared to admit, a sharp reminder that it was his own damn fault she didn’t trust him.
Garamont swiveled his chair toward her.“Sairy, I’m more inclined to approve this expedition if you go with them.We’d never have found the rift where the Agsteldt twins got lost last spring without your maps.”
The memory of the boy in Axolotl, gasping for breath, flashed in Houyen’s mind.He wanted to be there, to collect the samples himself, but the mission was more important than his involvement.He could find a way to get the samples tested later.
Sairy cleared her throat, her gaze sweeping over the expectant faces before landing, for a brief, unsettling moment, on his.“I’ll go.”
It took everything he had to suppress the look of astonishment that threatened to break across his face.
“Great,” Koda said, clapping her hands together softly.“Let’s talk logistics while you’re here.”
Houyen listened, mostly in silence, as the other three quickly made arrangements.He interjected only once.“No need to provision for me.I’ll bring all my own gear.”
“Got it,” Koda said with a cynical smile that reached her eyes.“We’re thrilled you’ve agreed to come along for the ride to provide safety in numbers for the Irakat-sponsored scientific expedition that’s completely and totally our idea.”
“Yes,” he agreed, his face perfectly straight.“I’m grateful for the invitation.The Ranger Service will be gratified that I am maintaining good relations with our cooperators and saving our unit the added expense of mounting a separate survey.”
Koda and Phen shared a laugh.Garamont excused himself, promising to open the Irakat supply house if they needed anything.
As Houyen walked away from the meeting a few minutes later, his mind whirling with to-do lists, he felt a surge of unaccustomed hope.Even if the samples disproved his theory, he would know he’d done his best.If Matsurgan found out later, the fallout would be epic, but Houyen had covered his tracks — and his ass — as best he could by sticking to policy.
And there was one other, more personal hope he barely dared to acknowledge.Maybe spending a few days with Sairy, working toward a common goal, could begin to repair the damage he’d done.He should be so lucky.
Chapter 5
Irakat Collective, Qal Corona • GDAT 3235.019
Sairysatonherairsled and watched as Houyen, Phen, and Koda checked their own airsleds one last time.Administrator Garamont flitted between them like an agitated hummingbird.
She wished they’d quit fiddling and just go.Yes, the three-day hike would take them into the challenging terrain of the high cloud forest to the northwest, but they had plenty of gear and working comms.The last-minute delays gave her too damn much time to regret agreeing to participate in the town’s scientific expedition.
Oh, right, the “routine botanical survey.”She was happy to help misdirect Houyen’sinferiorofficer.She didn’t want the CPS in her business any more than the townspeople did.
Sairy stroked Kyala’s head.The gargoyle had been ready to leave thirty minutes ago.Airsled trips usually brought new places to explore, which suited Kyala’s adventurous nature.“Soon,” Sairy murmured, wishing it were true.She regretted her decision to avoid communicating with Elkano unless it became necessary, not even via subvocalization.At the time, she’d wanted to keep one of her secrets, but now she had no one to talk to.
If Houyen had asked her right after Axolotl Bend’s Very Bad Day, as she’d named it, she’d have sent him and the town a map or two, then vanished for a while until they went on their own or forgot about it.
But Houyen had told the truth about infinity fever spreading.She’d since heard the story of how three Joro crew had stomped into Irakat Collective’s last trade day, demanding answers and a cure.The townspeople had rebuffed Joro’s crew, telling them that the cure was a myth, just like the supposed treasure of Jalkapanga that they’d been questioning everyone about for months.Then the lead enforcer, Pazhkeli, said they’d noticed that no one in the towns had died, and yet two of the construction crew had.After a fairly heated argument, the townspeople managed to send the interlopers packing, but Sairy felt guilty that her secret treatments had left the locals vulnerable to future scrutiny.People like Pazhkeli and his boss Falco Joro weren’t the type to take “no” for an answer.
She might even have stayed out of it despite the personal pleas for help.Rainforest people were proud of their self-reliance, so it took a lot for them to do that.She appreciated more than they’d ever know that they’d not asked questions when she’d first showed up three years ago, and had mostly respected her privacy ever since.
But the primary reason she’d agreed to go was that Houyen had unwittingly dropped a bombshell in her lap.He made a convincing case that a periodic maturity flight of cicada-like insects was the transmission vector of the infinity fever.Outbreaks had first been noted fourteen years ago.
Meaning the ship debris from her emergency landing in the rainforestcouldn’tbe the source.
That had left Sairy stunned.It was a good thing she’d been seated in the corner of the Irakat community room, waiting to hear why they’d invited her to the meeting in the first place.
It changed everything.If her leaking ship’s laboratory hadn’t contaminated the ablating pieces of incalloy, then her self-imposed cleanup task was done.She hadn’t caused the illness; she’d merely been unlucky enough to catch it.Thanks to the state-of-the-art xenobiology lab on board her ship and Elkano’s persistence, she’d been lucky enough to develop an effective treatment for it.If they wanted, she and Elkano could take their hold full of incalloy scrap and move on, and maybe figure out what to do with themselves.
On the other hand, it changed nothing.The ejection event that had sent them tumbling out of transit space and burrowing into the side of a remote volcanic mountain was still an unfathomable mystery.They knew too much and not nearly enough about what had happened.Questions chased around in her head like angry hummingbirds.Why had the mothership ejected them?Why had it sent them to Qal Corona, of all five hundred member planets in the Concordance?How long had she been in cryosleep?What had awakened her once they’d arrived?What tasks had they left unfinished?
At best, she was missing in action, and the CPS black-box project leaders wanted her back.At worst, they considered her a dangerous loose end and would destroy her and Elkano on sight to keep their secrets.The only thing she knew for sure was that she didn’t trust the CPS to have their best interests at heart.
