Page 5 of Latham
He guessed she took his advice after a brief hesitation, judging by the way she gasped and swiveled her head as if to see everything beneath them. The landing zone was clearly marked with bright lights and he angled them to make a perfect descent, all but coming to a stop on the antigrav and then going the last two feet like an old fashioned elevator arriving at the designated floor.
He unfastened the harnesses from each other and immediately caught Helaine as she fell to her knees in the grass. “Are you all right?”
With his help she rose on shaky legs and threw her arms in the air. “That was wonderful! Lords of Space, I had no idea.” She threw her arms around him and gave him a big hug. “Thank you for talking me into taking the risk.”
Really the jump had been risk free, especially compared to ones he’d made in combat with blaster fire and killer drones all around, descending at a great rate of speed, but he’d never been rewarded with an enthusiastic hug from a beautiful woman before either so he shut up and enjoyed the moment.
Helaine let him go, to his regret and struggled to get the harness off. A woman in an IDA Resort Planet uniform came out of a small hut off to the side and helped her while Latham took care of his own rig.
“I’m glad that’s over with though,” Helaine said, sitting cross legged and watching him repack his backpack. “Hey, are you taking those with you?”
“Sure, why not?” He’d detached the antigrav generator from his harness and hers and was making room for them with his own gear. “They might come in handy. I’ll turn them in once this adventure is over.”
“Won’t your pack be too heavy?” she asked.
“This is nothing compared to what we carry when we’re deployed in a combat zone,” he said truthfully. Or the weight of an injured comrade, who couldn’t be left behind…but he shoved the bitter memory aside. It had no place here on this bright afternoon in a tropical paradise with Helaine.
“When you’re ready, we can hike,” the IDA employee said.
“Oh, finally hiking,” Helaine chuckled. “I’m ready when you are.”
As they set out into the jungle on a well marked path, Latham worried about how well she’d cope with the next obstacle in their path to reaching the cove. Helaine was sweet, kind hearted person, gorgeous to look at, but obviously impulsive and heedless of consequences. He was exactly the opposite. Make a plan, revise the plan, research the plan, dry run the plan, revise the plan, dry run the revision, execute the plan. No room for errors or problems you should have identified and failed to see. Of course unexpected things happened—no mission ever ran exactly to the planned agenda—but you had to try to mitigate the issues you could be aware of.
She had obviously only paid attention to the beautiful, isolated cove and ignored the details of how guests arrived there.
As they hiked behind the guide, Helaine doing pretty well for a novice, he couldn’t find any regret or guilt in his heart for having forced her out of the shuttle, or for subjecting her to what lay ahead. He’d get her through it and eventually they would arrive at the pretty bungalow and virtually private beach and she could relax. He didn’t think Mindy in Admin would have been so bright and friendly if they came back the same day, requesting to be placed back in the hotel because Helaine had falsified her entire preference sheet. IDA had rules and clauses in their Terms of Service which Helaine had probably also not read, about people who lied on their profiles. Not to mention the Ardannan authorities would be upset to learn one of their slots had been wasted on a broken match.
He didn’t feel like it was broken though. Maybe the IDA algorithm had matched them in error, based on her foolish lies, or maybe it had seen through that and matched them because they were such complete opposites but he liked Helaine. He found he didn’t mind the chaos which came in her wake.
The path they were on was pretty smooth and level but it ended abruptly at the lip of a gorge. Helaine stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the vast distance to the other side. “All right,” she said, turning to Latham. “I get it. This trip is just all kinds of effing fun. Where’s the damn bridge?”
“Bridge?” he asked, delaying the inevitable upset when she learned the truth about the next challenge.
“Yeah, you know, the rickety old wooden bridge with no handrails swaying in the wind? Isn’t there always one in these locations?” She made big gestures with her hands. “You’ll have to carry me across it, I’m warning you.”
“There’s no bridge, ma’am,” the guide said with a puzzled frown. “You get across on the zipline.” She pointed at a wooden tower ahead.
Briefly Helaine was speechless, her mouth open in a gasp. “Zipline?” she screeched. “Oh no way, not happening, I’m going back to the hotel.”
“Give us a moment,” Latham said to the guide with a smile as he drew a fuming Helaine aside. “Sweetheart, it’ll be fine. You already handled the antigrav jump today, now you can do the zipline. All you have to do is strap yourself into the harness and float across the gorge to the other side. Then we have a little more walking and we’ll be there. No other aerial hazards, I promise.” He was reserving the information that there was a cliff to descend to reach the cove itself. “You know we can’t go back to the hotel. Even if we hiked back to the landing area, there’s no shuttle or flyer waiting. I honestly don’t know if IDA would even send one out since they were doing us a favor with this alternate trip.”
She stood with her head bowed, breathing hard. He grew worried when she stayed silent and gently tipped her face up with his finger under her chin. “What?”
“I know I should be okay with this after surviving the jump but what if the line breaks? What if I fall into the gorge and die?”
Latham looked over her head at the guide. “How many people have been on this thing since it was built?”
“Dozens,” she said. “The cove is secluded and small so we don’t get large numbers of guests but the line’s never broken and no one has ever fallen. We conduct safety tests on a regular basis. It was constructed to seem rustic but it’s built of the most up to date materials. Say, can we hurry this up a bit? I still gotta hike back to where I met you and get myself home to my own base.”
“Do you have a groundcar?” Helaine asked too eagerly.
“Single person hover scooter,” the guide replied. “Your friend is right—you haven’t got any choices. The only pickup point for guests is at the cove and the boat comes in four days.”
“Helaine, sweetheart, you’re a special person to me,” Latham said, putting his genuine feelings into the remark. “But trust me, you’re not the one special snowflake in the Sectors for whom the zipline is going to break, flinging you to your dramatic death while the guide and I watch in horror. It’s going to be a quick ride across the gorge, pretty vistas to see if you choose to keep your eyes open and check out the view and then you’ll be safe on solid ground over there.”
“Are you implying I have an exaggerated sense of my own importance and likelihood of suffering a climactic accident?” she asked, raising one eyebrow and putting her fists on her hips.
Latham eyed her cautiously, sensing he’d blundered into a trap. “I meant no offense…but, yes.”
