She let her concerns go as she basked in the quick freeze of the trapdoor. Refreshed, she stepped out into a cargo hold finally empty of Denali volunteers, at least during siesta.

  No. We’re done with that, she decided suddenly. Time to go.

  She snuck into Wilder’s cabin and roused him quietly, so as not to wake Reza and others. She waited until she’d drawn him along by the galley to admit she planned an abrupt departure, now. He recruited Cortez and Zan while Sass collected Ben, which proved impossible without rousing Copeland, who in turn insisted on waking Clay and Abel. Soon if anyone was asleep in the Thrive – and Sass doubted that – they were in Kassidy’s cabin.

  Ben and Cortez hastily got one of the bio-locks ready to go. Sass chose to leave the second as a generous peace offering. Meanwhile Wilder and Zan ran to take possession of Nanomage, which sped away before Sass could grapple the bio-lock and lift the Thrive.

  She selected rendezvous for this first leg by that stream tunnel through the ash fall. The Denali eventually verified that no one survived in that final isolated air pocket buried deep up the volcano slope. But to her annoyance, no one ever checked the stream.

  “Sass…darling…” Clay began, hanging behind her and Abel in the bridge as they landed. “Aside from thumbing your nose at this Diego, what exactly are you hoping to accomplish here?”

  Sass shrugged unrepentant. “Earn forgiveness, perhaps? We didn’t simply abscond with a Denali ship without permission. We did X. Which is to check out this stream. An omission that continued to bother my conscience. And then, having suffered a very uncomfortable final interview with Diego, we continued on to Waterfalls.”

  Clay sighed loudly. “And if they send Koala after us? Sass, please acknowledge that you will not fire on Koala. You can’t. You can only run away.”

  She considered that for all of the two seconds it deserved, and blanched. “No, we won’t fire on Koala.” On second thought, she got on the comms and clarified that point to Wilder and Zan as well. On third thought, she told Nanomage to move a couple kilometers uphill, still inside the edge of the ash devastation, but far enough away that Koala couldn’t threaten them both simultaneously.

  “What do you expect to find here?” Abel asked dubiously, when she finished her comms.

  “Nothing,” she admitted. “But we’ll take a look.”

  She pulled out her maps and checked the suspected stream void again with the sensors. It had been several weeks since they surveyed here. The hole had grown, extending another kilometer uphill, and widening at its downhill terminus at a rocky outcrop beneath the ash. She tapped the wide spot, and turned to Clay. “My gut says here. Logic says try both ends because I know nothing.”

  Clay leaned into the map, then swiveled the main display to take in the lay of the land. “Zan can lay open the top, upstream of the air pocket, and poke through. Call us if they find people, but don’t pursue it. We investigate the low end.”

  Abel concurred that the plan sounded reasonable as any. They set about it.

  With the Thrive’s sonic guns and exhaust stream, Sass and Abel cleared ash plazas on both sides of the stream and whisked the material clear to expose the rock face. This far from the volcano, the ash was only about 2 meters deep. With all the disturbance to either side, the remaining arc over the stream bed itself collapsed into the water.

  This didn’t result in a pile of ash mud against the rock face, however. The stream seemed to dive under the outcrop, bearing most of its ash load along with it.

  “Stop!” Abel cried abruptly. “Up!”

  Sass swung Thrive’s tail away from the cliff she’d been sweeping, and rose a few meters.

  “I saw a glint of something,” Abel explained. He panned the cameras around and zoomed in. The rock was splashed with pale ash mud, but they spotted a couple of glass bricks set at waist height.

  Sass backed off and set the ship down on the same side of the stream. They’d burned off the fallen trees in this spot, likely wild forest before the eruption. Thoughtfully, she checked in with Wilder and Zan. The hunter was on his way back to Nanomage, having found nothing but a mountain stream bed. She signed off.

  “I’m going in to look,” she decided. “It’s too hot for anyone else.” Past noon, the sun was broiling down on the blinding ash, the afternoon heat the worst of the day.

  “Except me,” Clay replied. “I’m coming with you.”

  She grinned at him. “Abel, you and Ben stay on the bridge. Anyone comes, you run away.”

  “And leave you behind?” Abel scoffed.

  “We’ll bring extra air,” Sass soothed.

  “And if we die, pick us up and tuck us into bed to get over it,” Clay added sourly.

  Sass felt her excitement drain away into sorrow. She said softly, “Suffocation won’t kill us for long, Abel.” They weren’t human, after all.

  Suffocation did, however, hamper progress, so the couple hauled extra air bottles along, and plenty of water. Clay picked his way over fallen trees and boulders, offering Sass a gentlemanly assist here and there.

  Clay carefully verified he was on their private channel. “Are you sure about leaving Abel and Ben in charge?”

  “Of course. Why not?” Sass returned.

  “They seem so…young.”

  Sass shot him a sad look, and declined to comment. Fair enough, he conceded. Even Eli and Cortez, the oldest of the crew after the cyborgs, seemed young and rash to Clay. He imagined that would only get worse as their one century grew to two.

  This ‘plaza’ was a far cry from the flat and tidy spaceport at city center. A few times he skidded on ‘steel glass,’ the puddled remains of trees that must have burned like torches. But he persevered. The second time he fell, he picked up a nicely shaped branch to carry along as a broom.

  “Now I want one,” Sass quipped. Sweat streamed down her face beneath her faceplate, the same as his own. He selected another broom-switch for her, and continued on.

  Taller, Clay kept their bearings headed toward the suspected glass bricks in the rock face. He stood precariously on a corkscrew trunk to spot for them, when someone emerged in a pressure suit, waving both arms. Clay waved his brooms in response.

  “Survivor at the rock face,” he announced over the ship channel, and pointed with a burnt fan-branch.

  “I see him,” Abel confirmed from the bridge. “Correction, her. I’ll try hailing on all channels from here. Abel out.”

  Sass scrambled faster, closer to the stream bed where there were more rocks, but fewer branches and trunks to trip her. He warned, “Careful over there, hon. Don’t take a swim.” This was no babbling brook, but a raging torrent several meters across, with white water rapids shooting through tumbled boulders.

  Or rather, pink water – this stream wore the clear deep orange of iron deposits, and its froth took on peach shades.

  “Contact, channel 4,” Abel announced. “Scholar Cora, I’m connecting you to our captain, Sass Collier, and Clay Rocha, on the field approaching you.”

  “Hello. Good to see you,” Cora greeted them perfunctorily. “But you cut the comms cable to our exit team. We have 4 people upstream. Please confirm they aren’t hurt!”

  “Contacting Wilder to investigate,” Abel cut in. “Abel out.”

  “That isn’t the Koala, and you’re not Perrin,” Cora observed. “Who are you people?”

  Sass finished clambering to the top of a boulder, and paused to chat. “Scholar Cora, our ship is the Thrive, out of Mahina –”

  “Oh! Welcome to Denali!” Cora interrupted. “Or actually, you’ve been here a few months already, haven’t you? What kept you so long?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Why has no one come to get us out of here?” Cora demanded.

  Clay cut in, “That’s a long story, ma’am. But we’re here now. Please tell us your condition. How many people? What is your medical status?”

  “Including the cable-laying team, we are 36 here,” the scholar replied. “This is the new Advanced Materials Lab facility – AML. We’re in good health. Why? We’ve been cut off for half a year!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sass placated. “The entire city of Denali Prime was buried beneath a blanket of ash when the volcanoes blew.” She went on to explain how the city was presumed dead until a few weeks ago. And in any case, the valley was too hot for anyone to come investigate until the Thrive came looking for fuel.

  “We have your fuel right here,” Cora replied. “Half of it, anyway.”

  Clay had continued clambering while Sass did the talking. He side-stepped around a final boulder and held out a hand to shake with the scholar. She eyed the hand in puzzlement, and he withdrew it. “Sass?” he prompted. “Less talking, more walking.”

  “Right.”

  “So at this location, you are not in any distress?” Clay pressed while they waited. “You have food and water, not too hot?”

  Cora glanced pointedly at the stream. “Clay, we’re more than capable of meeting our own needs here. Or am I to call you Rocha? Why do you have two names?”

  “My personal name is Clay,” he explained, failing to warm to this woman. “My family name is Rocha. Denali don’t have the same custom of family.”

  “No, we do not,” Cora confirmed with a clear note of censure. “We do, however, have close teams and associates. I’m very concerned about my cable party. We were hoping to reach the crest of the ridge to restore communications –”

  Abel cut in. “Man in the stream!”

  Sass, closest, immediately scrambled to a closer boulder and stuck out her broom.

  “Sass, don’t!” Clay screamed.

  Too late. The sodden man careening down the pink water cascade snatched at her makeshift broom for dear life. Sass didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in…Denali…of overpowering his momentum. Instead, she fell in behind him. In seconds, the raging current curled both underwater, and dove under the rock face.

  Clay cut in his grav generator, for a net 0.5 g, and ran for the place where the stream disappeared underground. To the extent anyone could run over fallen trees, or bound over tumbled boulders. He practically did a cartwheel over one of them.

  “Get that cable!” Cora demanded, struggling to catch up behind Clay. He didn’t bother to figure out what she meant by that.

  “Koala incoming,” Abel cried over the comms. Clay knew all too well what that meant.

  He loved Sass, or he thought he did. But the rego woman had the damnedest knack for getting into predicaments.

  34

  “Thrive, Koala,” the comms boomed out on the bridge. “Sass, stand down and prepare to be boarded. Tell Nanomage to follow. You are ordered to return to Hermitage.”

  Abel worried his lip in thought in the pilot seat.

  Ben reminded him, “Our orders –”

  The first mate hushed him with a brush-away gesture, then forced a smile. “Karin! Good to hear from you! What brings you up this way?”

  “Abel? Where’s Sass?” the other pilot demanded.

  Abel first met Karin as a new evacuee, a couple weeks back, her eyes haunted. They’d given her a week to regain her strength before putting her through her chops on Koala. She wasn’t much of a pilot, but she was the best the Denali had.

  “Sass is down below, talking to the survivors we just found,” Abel shared. Or she would be, at least, when they fished her out of the river. He hoped. “Your guy Diego missed a spot. Sloppy. We marked this area for investigation on the first day, Karin. The same day we marked the hole you were trapped in. And no one even came up here to check.”

  A marked pause preceded her reply. Abel took the opportunity to feed this conversation to Eli. The botanist understood hunters better than he did.

  Karin finally resumed, “Don’t make this difficult, Abel. I’m a Hermitage citizen now. Gotta obey this dork’s orders.”

  “Why?” Ben slipped in. “Hey, Karin, Ben here.” He’d tutored her on guns and the engineering pre-takeoff checklist. She was weak on both. “I don’t get your orders. We’re here to pick up survivors. What’s the dysfunction on Selectman Diego? Over.”

  “Nanomage belongs to Denali –”

  “Waterfalls,” Abel interrupted her. “Arguably Neptune. Takes a hell of a lot of fuel to lift from Neptune, though, and the wharf is too exposed. We’re taking care of Nano for now.”

  “I won’t argue with you, Abel. Stand down, and let me fly Thrive to Hermitage.”

  “Hey, no offense, Karin,” Ben cut in, “but you’re not flying my ship. Go practice on Koala somewhere else. The big kids are saving lives here.”

  “Har, har,” Karin returned. “Look, I’m landing and –”

  Abel lifted the Thrive and turned it to face Koala. “Karin, I’ve got people on the ground. One who needs rescue. So you’re going to leave nice and quiet.”

  The following pause lasted a surprisingly long time. Koala hung back, half a klick away, hovering on station. Abel and Ben exchanged a worried glance. Eli entered the bridge behind them.

  Karin’s voice sounded strangled when she got back on the line. Her chain of curses made little sense to Abel, involving sexual acts with unfamiliar parts of Denali wildlife anatomy, interspersed with names and demands at random. She halted as though expecting an answer.

  Eli murmured a translation. “She wants Ben and Copeland to surrender themselves. Then she’ll leave the ships alone.”

  “Why them?” Abel asked.

  “They stole advanced technology from Nanomage,” Eli explained. “Allow me?” Abel opened the channel for him. “Karin, Eli Rasmussen here of the Winter Sloths of Waterfalls.” He emitted the war cry.

  Karin snorted. “You do realize that’s for 12-year-olds. Right? What, you survived a single night outdoors alone?”

  “Hey, it was scary!” Eli objected. “I’m a Mahinan in my forties! We have no wildlife on Mahina.”

  “Huh,” Karin acknowledged. “I’m ordered to transport the accused to Hermitage.”

  “Karin, your orders are dishonorable!” Eli attempted. “Contemptible! Who would follow such an aardvark?”

  “Really sounding like a 12-year-old,” Karin judged. “Look, they’re accused of a crime. It’s for the courts in Hermitage to decide. Otherwise I’m ordered to fire at you.”

  Abel reasoned, “While we cannot shoot back. If we do, you’ll claim our ship in recompense, and we’re stranded here for life. Back down, Karin!”

  Eli winced and squeezed his arm. Abel glared at him.

  “You back down!” Karin screamed. “Target their –”

  A shot to the ash in front of Koala erupted in a cloud. Ben held his hands up in surrender. I didn’t do it!

  No, Nanomage did that, banking in to take station at Karin’s 4’o’clock, far enough back to clear Ben’s aim.

  “Another shot behind them? Box them in?” Wilder suggested over the comm.

  “Just stay put,” Abel instructed. “Her move.”

  Wilder argued, “Abel, if that bitch fires on you, I fire back!”

  “Hold, dammit!” Abel ordered. “Karin, this is unreasonable. I suggest we all step back from the brink before we do something we’ll regret –”

  “Truer words are rarely spoken,” cut in another voice on the channel. “This is Selectman Aden of Waterfalls.”

  “Thank heavens, Selectman,” Abel breathed. “We need –”

  “You will surrender your two accused engineers to Koala,” Aden continued. “Or you will have no safe harbor on this planet. Waterfalls will withdraw its hospitality. Abel, be reasonable. They are accused of stealing valuable property –”

  “We salvaged that ‘valuable property’ from the bottom of the sea!” Abel countered. “You lost it, we retrieved it. You have no way of using it, and we needed it! The captain salvaged that ship at great personal risk.”

  “Yes, and all of these things will be taken into account at the trial,” Aden replied smoothly. “But first you must surrender your personnel. Then – and only then – the rest of you can return to Waterfalls as our guests. Abel, you have no choices here.”

  Abel fumed a couple seconds. Eli and Ben made motions to suggest they had ideas, but he ignored them. “Why, Aden? Why would you sell us out like this?”

  “I don’t perceive that you have been treated in any way unfairly, Abel. The innocent have nothing to fear from Denali law, I assure you.”

  “I’ll surrender them in Waterfalls, not to Hermitage,” Abel countered. Ben looked outraged beside him. “Only after we complete our relief mission – in progress! And I demand to speak to Selectman Gorey.”

  “Gorey is no longer in charge of the Denali Prime rescue operation,” Aden replied in his unflappably self-satisfied tone. “Selectman Diego of Hermitage gave your captain orders, which she sadly chose to ignore. Where is the lovely Captain Sass, by the way? I am not accustomed to speaking with underlings.”

  Abel flipped his middle finger at the console. “Sass is actively engaged in a rescue.” He fervently hoped that was true, that the captain was saving herself from an underground river as they spoke. Because he sure as hell wasn’t doing her any good.

  “Hm. May I speak to Clay?” Aden requested.

  “Clay is off-ship with Sass.” Abel checked a camera. Clay appeared to be rigging ropes and preparing to dive underground. He pointed to the image and mouthed Stop him! to Ben.

  “You may speak to me,” Eli offered. “Dr. Eli Rasmussen. Selectman Aden, you are risking a severe interplanetary incident. My government on Mahina will be deeply disturbed. I urge a pause to consult with Mahina, reflect, complete our current rescue mission, retrieve our personnel on the ground, and then return to Waterfalls for discussion.”

  “I’m afraid Koala has already received orders to fire upon you by Hermitage,” Aden replied. “If that should transpire, the situation grows unmanageable.”

  Abel growled, “We are not responsible for those foolish orders!”

 

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