“We’ll make a short stop here,” Herdis announced.
“Yes, please,” Ayna replied.
‘Here’ was a somewhat rocky area through which a narrow stream flowed. Ayna’s first act was to drop her pack on the ground with a relieved sigh, and her second was to walk over and refill her canteen. Then she returned to her pack and was glad to sit down. She was less glad to dip into the provisions, but her stomach overrode her taste buds.
The inside of the pirate ship had been ugly. None of them had survived the crash, which had spared Ayna being party to either finishing them off or leaving them to die slowly. Instead they’d just climbed over bodies and bits of smashed metal while looting what they needed for the trek. There had been plenty of high-nutrition, low flavour ration bars, and days of nothing else to eat had made them somewhat bearable.
Ayna glanced at her companions. All of them carried more burdens than she did, and not just food and water. Herdis had insisted that Saketa take a rifle, and after a bit of hesitation the strange warrior woman had relented. Then there was the heavy gun. It was the sort meant to be mounted on a swivel or a powered combat suit, but Herdis had attached a strap to the cooling system so it could be worn as a backpack. Bers had readily admitted that he’d never used anything like it, but he was the only one strong enough to lug it around, and so he did.
The Fringer dropped the monstrous weapon down on the ground and started nibbling at a bar. Saketa sat cross-legged with her eyes closed. And Herdis nibbled with one hand while examining her map with the other.
“I really do think we’re almost through,” the woman said after a little while. “We should reach a long, narrow canyon pretty soon, and after that it will be a gradual downhill until we reach the town.”
“Time?” Bers asked between nibbles.
“Depends on the growth,” Herdis replied. “And the land. We’ll see. Maybe twelve more hours.”
Twelve hours. Half a standard day until Ayna could sleep in a proper bed again... and they would have to decide whether to simply flee the planet or not.
Of course, Wembella’s wilderness had taught them to not rely too much on time estimates. There were the occasional rocky patches where they were spared the growth’s embrace, but for the most part their progress over the highlands was through the growth. They wove through it when they could, and when they couldn’t Saketa and Bers chopped a path through. And sometimes they arrived at an impassable cliff or ravine and had to backtrack. Overall, progress was slow but steady.
“Say, Herdis?” Ayna said and the woman looked her way. “Do you wish we’d taken that boat trip a day early?”
Herdis gave her a polite smile, then turned her attention back to the map. It wasn’t much of a reaction, but to be fair Ayna’s delivery wasn’t at its best. They were targets of an enemy with a massive advantage, and they would remain so until they either bought passage off-world or the Addax returned. Their survival was dependent on sheer stamina and not losing their way, so it was probably wise to just save her own breath and let Herdis study every square millimetre of that map.
Ayna let out a silent sigh and flexed her shoulders, stiff from carrying that damn bag. Her spirit wasn’t helped at all by feeling useless. There wasn’t much point in her being stealthy when everyone else was clomping around like industrial robots, they didn’t travel during the night, and a Dwyyk body wasn’t designed for carrying large amounts of gear. It all left her with little to do other than worry and ponder.
“Let’s keep on going,” Herdis said and stood up.
Bers put his ration pack back on as well as the gun. Saketa ended her... whatever... took up her part of the supplies, and drew her sword. Herdis shouldered her backpack and unslung the rifle. Ayna suppressed a moan of misery and put those damned straps back over her aching shoulders.
“Through there,” Herdis said to Saketa, and pointed at the growth in their way. “This seems like the best way to that canyon.”
Ayna would have been able to make it through easily enough, but the others wouldn’t, and so Saketa got to work, cutting away the worst of the obstructions. It was her turn. Ayna followed right behind her, doing her best to watch out on the off chance that it might do a bit of good. The local predators were fluffy little kittens compared to the demons of Dwyyk, and hardly likely to attack a four-person group. It left her mind with enough space to wander. And it generally wandered to the woman in front of her.
That incident with the pirate ship’s wing had somehow gone entirely unmentioned, at least as far as Ayna could tell. Saketa and Bers had the occasional exchange in whatever Outer Fringe language it was that they shared. Herdis seemed utterly absorbed in leading the group to safety, and Ayna wasn’t entirely sure she’d seen what really happened. And Ayna herself... didn’t really know what to say.
She didn’t even really know why she wanted to broach the subject in a private conversation. Perhaps for the words to feel less absurd coming out of her mouth. But there was no privacy to be had, and so Ayna kept silent.
She watched the woman’s back for a while as she worked to clear their path, one powerful swing after another. Ayna looked back to see Bers and Herdis focused simply on not tripping or snagging on the growth, as they had been for the whole of this hike.
Magic? Was that it? Should she simply decide to believe in magic? Ayna thought back to that conversation during the flight to Uktena Station and cursed herself for not remembering it better. One heard stories, of course. About the Outer Fringe and its strange people with their strange customs and beliefs. But people always told outlandish tales about any distant and exotic place, didn’t they?
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The silence about it all had a weight to it, making Ayna question herself. Had she really seen a person down a ship by gesturing at it? Her mind sought ways to arrange events in a fashion that took the pressure off; some explanation that made sense. She remembered someone linking strange First Civilisation tech to stories of those Warden people, but it wasn’t like Saketa was wearing special gloves, or even sleeves to hide anything beneath.
All Ayna could ultimately do was shake her head a bit and continue on. It wasn’t like the woman was magicking the growth away.
The strange, ubiquitous plant formation DID have the decency to thin out as they slowly went higher, and Saketa sheathed her sword. Bers continued to have some modest difficulty, what with his size, burdens and weirdly awkward movements, but anything that snagged him he could just bend or break out of the way by stubborn pushing. If not for her own pack Ayna would have had an easy time of it, but in addition to weighing her down and sapping her stamina it did have a habit of catching, fouling her twists and turns through the branches. And somehow it was every bit as annoying now as it had been at the start of this journey.
It was a true pleasure when it all got thin enough to see the mountaintops again. Soon after that, their line changed into walking by twos, putting Saketa next to Ayna. The woman had to know she was curious after that whole wing business, and surely had noticed all the looks since. But her own feelings were locked behind an impassive mask, and Ayna found herself wishing for a little private time with Kiris, to get her impressions.
They had almost completely left the growth behind, on a rocky plateau scarred by ancient glaciers, when Herdis called for a stop.
“That’s it,” the woman said, pointing downhill. “I can’t pronounce it, but that peak... below it is the canyon we need. If it is passable it will save us a couple of days and we’ll see the town on the other side. If it isn’t, we can still walk across on the northern side of it.”
“Good,” Bers said. “Very good.”
This didn’t look like a proper stop, but Ayna still seized the chance to drop her pack for a few moments. Her shoulders felt like they were hovering up away from her body.
Herdis took a swig from her canteen and gave Saketa a thoughtful look. The crimson-haired Outer Fringer was gazing towards the canyon.
“Saketa,” Herdis said after a brief pause. “If we find a flight off-world, will you be joining us?”
“Perhaps,” the woman replied without turning to look at her. “I do need to leave, but I might also stay and look into some things. We will see.”
“Alright,” Herdis said, and observed the woman for a few seconds more before putting her canteen away. Ayna deemed Herdis’s demeanour to be circa ‘nonplussed but focused on not showing it’.
“Wait, quiet!” Ayna suddenly said before her mind could even identify what she was hearing. The others looked at her and a moment of silence allowed her to recognise the sound. “I hear a ship!”
“That rock formation!” Herdis announced, pointed and hurried off towards whatever she had in mind. The others followed and Ayna snatched her bag off the ground. It didn’t feel quite so heavy now, with adrenaline shooting through her veins.
The engine noise got louder in her ears as they dashed downhill, going over rocks and ancient gouges. Ayna spotted the formation Herdis had meant; it sloped inwards towards the ground, creating an awning of solid rock above. She looked about, trying to spot the ship. If it was flying low they stood a chance. If it was high up they’d probably already been spotted.
They made it to the awning and ducked under its cover. Ayna tried not to feel selfish for pushing the furthest in, right into the corner. She was the smallest; she would fit the best.
Herdis readied her rifle, although Ayna didn’t know what good it would do against an armoured ship. And Bers switched the safety off his monster gun, although Ayna didn’t know if he would actually hit anything with it. And Saketa... well, she looked intense. The voice of selfish survival posed a question: If the others ran out of hiding as the pirates spotted them, would it be wisest for her to just stay in her little nook?
The ship didn’t pass completely over their heads, but judging by the noise of the old engine it came very close. The drone echoed slightly off the surrounding landscape; they were indeed flying low. Ayna didn’t see much from where she lay, but Herdis at least certainly saw the ship. The woman looked through her scope, trailing the ship.
“Sure looks like pirates to me...” she said quietly.
The ship seemed to do a circle around the area. There was something downright ugly about the noise of it; a machine pieced together from various sources, damaged in battle and abused for maximum speed and minimum heat.
But it left, blasting away from the direction it had come.
“That probably was them,” Saketa agreed.
Bers rumbled. Herdis turned towards the Fringer woman and fixed her with a look.
“Whatever you did to the first ship...” the soldier-medic said in a neutral voice. “Can you do it again?”
Saketa looked back and was silent for a moment.
“Not reliably,” she admitted, though doing so clearly pained her.
“Then we simply rely on not being seen,” Herdis replied. “Ayna, can you still hear the engine?”
“No.”
“Then we move.”
The dark-skinned woman was the first one out, followed by Saketa, then Bers and his bulky burdens and finally Ayna herself. They jogged onwards downhill, moving towards that canyon and the cover it offered. It was an unpleasant pace on top of fatigue, with the bag banging about on her lithe body, but damned if she was going to complain. Ayna did her best to listen for that engine’s return, although her own breath and pumping blood were getting ever louder in her ears.
There was cover to be had along the way, from skyward observation, but it was split up between various formations and cliffs, and zig-zagging between would at least double their journey. Herdis led the group down the shortest route, down increasingly steep rock, and Ayna wasn’t about to complain about that either.
It almost felt like a nightmare; rushing across a great length towards cover, in fear of an unseen evil that could strike from above at any moment.
Bers stumbled and fell, going into a clumsy somersault that would have made Ayna laugh under other circumstances. He seemed to hit his head, but just rolled to his feet and kept on going with minimum time wasted, without Ayna having to embarrass herself by trying to help.
And just like in a nightmare they were getting very close when Ayna heard the engine again.