Page 21 of Stellar Drift
Houyen muted his comms, then caught her eye.“Can you check in with Koda and Phen?I’ll listen, but I have to answer Brannezzo when he comes back.”
She nodded, then tapped the team earwire and subvocalized after the alert tone.“Having fun, subcaptains?”
“A blast.”Koda’s prompt response suggested she’d been expecting the call.“Ranger Brannezzo truly detests the outdoors.The spider webs at the geomarker warped his calm so bad that he shut himself in that flying deathtrap of a flitter.Whoever had their bets on his two pals being Joro mercs gets to split the prize.They’re rigged up for urban warfare, so we decided to give the rainforest goddess a little help.”She chuckled.“One of Charuuk’s woolly dogs knocked one merc into a mudhole.The other one fell in during the rescue.Once they got out, the dogs played runaway pups and got them so turned around that they don’t know which way is up.Charuuk says they’re three kilometers from the geomarker and don’t know how to calibrate a compass.”
Sairy pictured the area in her mind.“There weren’t any mudholes when we hiked up.”
Koda laughed.“There are now.”
“So they’re after the treasure?”
“Yeah, we think so.This might be a side-gig instead of being sanctioned by Joro.One of the mercs was talking about buying a joy palace with her share.Enforcers don’t get bonuses like that.The flitter has an empty crate strapped to its ass, presumably in case the treasure is portable.And fits inside.And it’s not too heavy for the flitter to lift.”She made a rude noise.“Slick slice-and-haul specialists, they ain’t.”
“We’re near the top of Jalkapanga, in a cave with a river of rotting wuzzy-bug nymph corpses.Houyen took plenty of samples for Phen.It’s not the breeding ground, though.Should we come back down?”
“Nope.Keep looking.You’re safer up there for now.Let us know if anything changes, and we’ll do the same.”A brief chirp ended the comm.
Sairy didn’t mind the implication that she and Houyen would be a liability in a skirmish because it was true.He was a watcher and a thinker, and her best skill was slipping out the back by the time bellowing drunk fathers started kicking in the front door.
Moments later, Brannezzo came back online.“That was Matsurgan.He wants to know where you are and how soon you can get here.”The man sounded noticeably more stressed than before.“I’m not supposed to leave without you.”
Houyen rolled his eyes.“Okay, but I’m twelve hours away from the geomarker, and I’m not hiking at night.You should probably go back down to Irakat Collective to wait.I think I can be there by noon or so.I left my flitter on Irakat’s landing pad.”A sharp smile flashed across his face.“Or you and the two locals you brought — I didn’t catch their names — could camp tonight where you are at Spider Rift and help me find my airsled in the morning.”
“We, uh, didn’t bring any camping gear.We’ll meet you in Irakat.”Two chirps signaled the end of the conversation.
Sairy exploded with suppressed laughter.“Spider Rift?”
Houyen grinned.“It needed a name.”
“How long has he been a ranger?”She shook her head.“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone so unsuited for his job.”
“Me, either.”Houyen shrugged.“He’s a greedy ass who thinks the universe owes him, but he might not have started out that way.From what I’ve seen, the CPS’s policy is to keep control of all high-level talents, even if they have no use for them.Terraform companies and agricultural corps would start a salary bidding war to get his insect-affinity talent.”He looked down as he scuffed one boot in the gravel.“The only upside to the CPS having forgotten we exist is that even top-level talented rangers don’t have to go on the so-called ‘enhancement’ drugs.They’re poison, no matter what the CPS says.”
“Yeah, they are.Lucky for me, patterners don’t get the drugs, either.My uncle retired from the CPS and hovered around death’s door for nine miserable years.”
Kyala made a whining sound and crowded next to Sairy’s thigh.The gargoyle had picked up on Sairy’s sadness and was trying to comfort her.She contained her emotions as she stroked the sweet creature’s broad head and fondled one dusty ear.“Sorry.”
Houyen took out a deep breath, then let it out forcefully.“How about we check the back of the cave, see what Koda and Phen say, then find a place to camp for the night?Not here, though.”He wrinkled his nose.“And nowhere near the lake.The stench would kill me.”
“Kyala agrees with you about the smell.”She waved toward the back of the cave.“Your light is brighter, so I’ll follow you.”
Chapter 8
Jalkapanga Mountain, Qal Corona • GDAT 3235.021
Houyen’sfirstreactionwhenhe saw the door to an actual cryogenex vivo-vault was wonder.Their locations were kept secret because the priceless contents were vulnerable to thieves, and more critically, to contamination.
His next thought was to wonder what bonehead thought it was a good idea to install a critical deep-freeze unit at the top of a frickin’volcanoin a terrain full of them.In the middle of a frickin’ tropicalrainforestthat had more insidiously invasive plants and insects per square kilometer than any other known habitat.In a region with a recent geological history of frickin’earthquakesthat might have cracked open an incalloy box like an adult wuzzy bug cracked open its silvery nymph carapace before flying away.
Oh, and in a mountainous area known for stalled storms that produced days of torrential rains.Enough to fill a cracked vault with so much water that the lock of the two-meter-thick door failed under the pressure, forcing the door open just enough to allow a steady flood to escape and take the contaminated vault contents — and thousands of drowned wuzzy-bug nymphs — with it.
The three-tone beeping that Kyala had heard came from the glowing access panel to the right of the door.It reminded him of the alarm in the base’s kitchen cold box when someone left the door open.The access panel and the smooth rock wall it was embedded in were the only things in the vault not ruined.
“You recognize this,” Sairy said.It wasn’t a question.
“I do.It’s a seed vault.”He gave her the colloquial name for it.“After the defeated Central League tried to poison hundreds of rebel planets as a final fuck-you, the brand new Central Galactic Concordance government established the banks on random member planets throughout the galaxy.They have DNA and actual samples of every keystone plant and animal species we need to make a viable terraform.Or recover a colonized planet that’s been poisoned.”
“Oh.”
