The Seek (23 page)

‘Snarls,’ he confirmed, his breathing ragged, and she nodded.

Damn. She placed an arm under his shoulders and dragged him to his feet, wrenching a yelp from him as she did. She dragged him over to a sizeable tree that had fallen nearby, and deposited him behind it. She reached behind him and into his pack, extracting a med patch, tearing it open with her teeth and slapping the large adhesive all the way across the gaping wound in his abdomen — over gash, clothes, dirt and all.

It would probably do nothing for his chances of survival, but at least it would free up his hands.

‘Thanks, Doc,’ he wheezed at her.

She nodded, and put a sabre in one of his hands and a knife in the other. The tiny blade could despatch anything that came too close, if Tyrin had the strength to use it as she had shown him. ‘Wait here,’ she whispered, scanning the forest around them, looking for anything. ‘And don’t be a hero.’

He grunted back at her: ‘Fat chance, Magister.’ But his blue eyes were pale and terrified, and she could tell he didn’t want her to go.

As she scanned the space around them again, she saw what she needed. The slightest flash, almost just a blur of shadow, really.

There. She had them. Whoever the hell they were.

She slipped back towards Asha and collected him, calling out two quick chirps with her cupped hand to tell the others to stay in place. When she arrived at the place where Asha had taken up refuge in the kill zone, she saw that he and Rexas had made a small dugout, quickly and efficiently, and stationed an ashen-faced Tabi into it.

Kyntura communicated with a few quick hand signals, then Rexas moved off with her. As they moved towards the place she was targeting, they collected Mirren and Kendis. More signals, and the sketchy plan was in play.

They advanced quickly, via a long arc to the rear. As they got close, Mirren and Kendis peeled to the left, going high and long into the trees before circling around from the back. Then she and Rexas went in low and fast, hitting the clearing she saw opening up before them with a hail of their own fire-arrows. Their assault was unexpected. The clearing went up in flames and carcasses hit the ground screaming, one landing with a sickly thud right near them.

She looked over. A long lean body, the colour of a sunset on Old Earth, lay broken beside them, looking disconcertingly like a human, apart from the pointed head and puppet-like arms and legs.

Rexas grimaced as he surveyed the carnage in front of them. ‘Scouts?’

Kyn nodded. ‘Looks that way,’ she agreed. She put her hand up to her mouth again and emitted three long trills.

Move out
.

Kyn was glad they had made it to the camp unaccosted, but she didn’t like that they hadn’t heard anymore from the Haitites after the scouts’ attack. Had the scouts not made contact with their base? Or was it something more sinister? Did the creatures already know where they were headed?

‘We leave in an hour,’ she told the Primo on the spot, Gustas. She knew him a little; had briefed him before she had entrusted her last class to him. But she didn’t feel so kindly towards him now. Sure, it wasn’t logical. It wasn’t his fault that three of her best had died on this mission. And the rest — the recon missions had not gone well. Only six of the fifty-niners were left. But this wasn’t about logic; this was about loyalty.

The squat black man raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t want to wait until morning?’

Kym stepped close to him. ‘Did you not hear what I have been telling you?’ Her voice was low and lethal. ‘They jumped us, out there in the forest. They know we’re here. The only question is, what are they going to do about it? I, for one, don’t want to give them any extra time to decide. But if you do, be my guest.’ She gestured at the small camp, which was surprisingly well set-up given how short their tenure had been. She sacrificed a second to marvel at the ingenuity of humans. Then she went on. ‘All I want, before we move out, is a brief. From you, and the Explorer.’

Gustas nodded, his eyes cast down, cowed by her fury. ‘I’ll get her.’

Kyn leaned back against a rock. She wouldn’t sit; she couldn’t afford to turn her body off. They had chosen well for the camp — a natural rock round, formed by the passage of water against the side of a gorge. The opening faced outwards, back down the valley towards the forest they had come through, so it afforded good protection and vantage. On her orders, Avengers new and old were dismantling the camp, taking what they needed to, destroying the rest. Kyn wasn’t abandoning this planet — far from it; but she was sure they wouldn’t use this location again, no matter what happened next. In a universe full of enemies, surprise was one of the only weapons you could really count on.

She motioned to Symon, Asha, and Tabi. The three hurried over quickly. ‘I need you here for this,’ she barked at them, barely making eye contact. It was too hard; there was too much going on for the distractions of assurance and sympathy. They just needed to listen.

‘The Explorer briefing?’ Tabi’s pretty, clever face was alert.

‘Yep, the Primo’s getting her now.’

Kyn was surprised when a young woman hurried towards them with Gustas, even younger than Tabi.

She frowned at the woman, whose red curls were loose, and whose pale skin wore a flush of excitement. ‘You the Explorer?’

Tabi made an irritated sound in the back of her throat and Kyn realised she was being rude.

‘Sorry,’ Kyn puffed. ‘Jesus, it’s just…’

The woman laughed prettily, holding out her tiny hand. ‘Dona,’ she said. ‘And not so many of the older ones wanted to come after…well…you know, the last disasters.’

Kyn frowned. No, she did
not
know. The intelligence about this place had been strangely patchy. Just how many missions had there been here? What had they learned? And how many had they lost? And why were they persisting with this place if someone was putting up such a fight to claim it? It contravened all the principles of The Seek. There were too few of them left to risk heavy casualties.

Dona shrugged and glanced around the rest of the group. Her eyes widened as they landed on Symon, then quickly flicked over him to Asha.

Kyn eyeballed Symon. ‘You guys know each other?’

He studied Dona, pulling on one ear. ‘Nope,’ he said, finally.

Liar
.

Then, with that trademark white grin. ‘Apologies if I’m forgetting something I shouldn’t, honey.’

A flash of white-hot jealousy spiked through Kyn and she felt like running her sword through her oldest friend just to manage the rush of it. He was obfuscating, that much was clear; the girl obviously knew him, and he her. So why would he deny it? And, worse, why would her heart leap to jealousy, of all emotions? Why not curiosity? Rage?

She considered this new Explorer carefully. The young woman was very pretty — she reminded Kyn of pictures she had seen of old paintings: delicate, but lush. There was a fierce intelligence to the set of her mouth.

Kyn squared her shoulders. Like so much of this crap, she didn’t have time to make sense of this piece of the puzzle right now.

She shrugged. ‘Okay, hot stuff,’ she said casually to Symon. ‘Whatever.’

Then, to Dona. ‘Shoot, Explorer. What do we need to know to make it out of here alive?’

Kyn found herself mesmerised as the woman began to speak. Her accent was soft and correct; Kyn was sure her people had come from somewhere in Britain, before the Apocalypse. But it was more than the way she formed the sounds. She was tiny, and she spoke with her whole body — leaning forwards to emphasise a point, gesturing wildly with those fragile hands, widening her eyes as something occurred to her.

‘Well, the star first,’ she started, clearing her throat as she looked around the little circle at Asha, Tabi, Kyntura and Symon. ‘It is as they thought. The closest we have come across. As you’ve seen —’ She motioned in the direction of their faces. ‘— it’s oxygenated, so no need for breathers.’ She shrugged a little, almost apologetically. ‘But the atmosphere is not completely friendly. There’s a chemical in the air down here that will corrode human skin —’

Kyn found herself unconsciously rubbing her bare arms and glancing over at her vest where she had laid it against the rock.

Dona laughed a little, sweeping her all-seeing gaze around the circle, and Kyn realised they were all doing something similar. ‘It’s okay,’ she assured them all quickly. ‘It’s a slow-burn thing. I’ve had the crew here using aloetium nightly. It kind of…’ She wrinkled her nose cutely and Kyn considered that she could hardly blame Symon if he had slept with this mesmerising little thing. ‘…embalms you.’

‘Corpse analogies are not so cool right now,’ Asha said, looking less impressed by the beautiful, clever woman than Kyn.

Typical. He’d only ever had eyes for Tabi
.

Dona smiled, and inclined her head graciously, then went on. ‘Anyway, so basically: bring your moisturiser and you’ll be fine. Apart from that, real interesting place. Rich in resources, especially vientium. But also gerrth and nialdium.’

Aha
, Kyn thought. And there it was. Riches. So this was not just about The Seek. No wonder The Council was so keen to persist.

They had all learned that wealth mattered. It was how the Gigarions had been allowed to do what they did to the Earth.

Dona was continuing. ‘Flora and fauna is out of this world.’ She nodded at Tabysha. ‘You’re going to love it.’

The two Explorers smiled at each other and Kyn felt like she was on Geek Street.

‘Yeah, okay,’ Kyn said, flapping her hand like,
we’re not a trip to the zoo, here
. ‘So cut to the chase. Why doesn’t anyone live here?’

‘Ah now, that’s the interesting question.’ Dona pushed her hair away from her eyes, which were flashing green. ‘My theory is…’ She paused a little and Kyn felt like she was waiting for a drumroll. When it didn’t eventuate, she went on. ‘…my theory is that Eden 13 was inhabited, a very, very long time ago. Samples around the forest rim, and some of the streams…I’m sure there are traces of an ancient civilisation there.’

Tabi looked like she was about to explode with excitement. Before she could ask something complicated and irrelevant, Kyn jumped in. ‘So what happened?’

Dona was almost vibrating with the thrill of sharing her theory. ‘My guess is extinction.’

Kyn’s brain hurt. ‘Like the dinosaurs?’

Dona frowned. ‘Not really, perhaps more like semi-extinction, although it may have been caused by a sudden climactic shift. But my bet’s on a big bang.’

‘Huh.’ Tabi was grinning. ‘A collision?’ She motioned at the others. ‘Like the one that kick-started life on earth.’

‘Mmm,’ Dona agreed. ‘It wiped out whoever owned this place, or most of them, but the flora and fauna survived.’ She shrugged. ‘Can happen. Could have been a gas cloud that came with the bang. Not sure…’

Okay, interesting, but… ‘So why didn’t anyone claim it? After?’ Kyn was tapping her foot nervously.

‘You might have noticed there aren’t that many oxygen breathers out here,’ Dona said, a small smirk playing around her mouth. Kyn opened her mouth to protest, but Dona held up a hand. ‘I know, I know,’ she said, flicking open a small V-pad. ‘The resources. Why didn’t someone claim them, at least? Well, I have a theory about that too.’

Gustas, who’d been quiet during Dona’s lecture, groaned quietly.

Dona frowned. ‘Our Primo doesn’t buy my theory.’

Gustas grunted. ‘It’s not that I don’t buy it, I just don’t know how it’s relevant.’ His big square shoulders heaved unhappily.

Kyn considered the Primo. She knew his type. The ones who thought all the intelligence surrounding a mission was just so much white noise. They were good, often very good, but to Kyn’s mind they could never be great, because fighting was more than physical, even more than mental. To really defeat an enemy, you needed to understand them, and to do that, you needed to know all you could about them. ‘Go on,’ she said to Dona. ‘I’d like to hear your theory.’

Dona shot the Primo a pointed look, and tapped on her screen. ‘It’s the pattern of where we’ve spotted them,’ she said. ‘And where they’ve attacked us.’ She held up a chart, with coordinates and small crosses. It was familiar to Kyn; she recognised the sites where they’d lost crew, from the briefings. Dona went on. ‘In these places, I found more recent traces of life. I think they come visit if you like. From somewhere else.’

‘Who are they? The Haitites?’ Kyn was struggling to keep up.

Dona nodded. ‘Yes. I think they visit Eden, for some reason, regularly, but they only go to a few places. And they don’t like it that we’re here, even though they don’t live here. I’m sure you’ve heard: they’re good — very skilled fighters. The work I’ve done…I think they’re a very old civilisation. I’m sure they’re probably the reason no-one else has settled here either.’

‘So they mine it?’ Asha stepped forward, considering the chart, frowning over the locations.

‘No,’ Dona said simply. ‘There is absolutely no evidence that they ever do. But they sure don’t like it when we do.’

Tabi was standing close to Dona and Asha, considering the V-pad too. ‘Sacred sites?’ She glanced up at Dona. ‘Burial?’

Dona nodded, giving Tabi a broad, impressed smile. ‘I think so. This place is special to them, and everyone but us seems to know it because all of the rest of them — the Tyverians, the Temerites — they all stay away. The Haitites don’t want to mine it, or live on it, they just want to visit.’

‘So maybe, if we just stay away from their sites…?’ Symon was also clearly trying to join the dots.

‘No,’ Dona said quickly. ‘I don’t think that would help our cause now. We’ve noticed since we’ve got here, they seem to be more set on attacking us. It’s like we’ve really pissed them off, somehow. I mean, they ambushed you in the forest, and as far as I’ve been able to tell, there are no sites there.’

‘The bit about your theory that doesn’t make sense,’ Gustas said, still sounding peeved that he was even discussing it, ‘is the why? Why do the Haitites come here? What is this place to them? Why is it sacred?’ The squat man made the inverted commas signs around the word sacred, and Kyn felt like ramming the butt of her sabre into his pug face.