As she stared glumly into her morning hot chocolate, Kayla tried to divine some hidden truths in the milky swirls. The liquid stared back silently, mocking her desperation. She wondered if tea leaves might be better—they certainly couldn’t be as useless as she had been to the hunt.
Urtiga dropped her tray down onto the table next to her. She had piled her plate high with sausages, bacon and eggs, together with a pint of orange juice. The kitchen of the roadside guesthouse was well supplied—it had to be, since it served the many truck drivers who plied the Lanstead roads. Kayla watched incredulously as the woman wolfed it all down.
“How are you so hungry?” she asked.
Urtiga paused to swallow her last mouthful. “You’d better not be feeling sorry for yourself,” she said sternly.
“I just don’t feel like eating.”
“Get over it. Rangers stay positive and don’t risk compromising their fitness by going hungry.”
Kayla couldn’t argue with that, so she went to fetch herself a somewhat less stacked plate of food. The kitchen lady smiled rosily at her as she shoveled greasy portions onto her plate.
“Cheer up, love,” she said. “It might never happen.” It was a common expression amongst the colonists, a reminder that fate could be as kind as it was cruel.
“Yes, ma’am.” Kayla nodded, trying her best to put on a believable smile. When she returned to the table, she saw that Zhang and Christie had arrived, and were already deep in discussion over unfolded maps.
“I take it back. I’m an idiot,” Kayla said, as she dropped her tray. “We shouldn’t waste more time on this.”
“Kayla’s always had a penchant for melodrama,” Christie explained to the others.
Urtiga nodded. “I decided to follow this lead, because it was a good one, and I will decide when we give it up.”
“We’ve been to more than twenty guesthouses and truck stops, and not a single person remembers anything about Helvetic soldiers wandering around,” Kayla objected.
“We’ve only gotten through forty percent of the search area,” Zhang said. “A few dry holes are to be expected.”
“Yes, but… news spreads so easily here,” Kayla insisted. “We should have heard something by now.” She searched for the words to try and help her comrades understand the wildfire nature of Calderan gossip, but came up empty.
“Give it a rest already,” Urtiga said firmly. “This is intelligence work; it’s long and boring and takes a while to get any kind of positive return. We’re going to keep at this for another week, so you really need to get past the negativity.”
Kayla said nothing, watching morosely as they planned the route they would take for the day. They had been working for two weeks, stopping at various public places where the local farmers would be expected to trade news. They usually posed as a survey team scouting unexploited land, and let Kayla do the talking, since she knew the mannerisms and phrases that would help them keep a low profile. At some point in the conversation, she would let slip her disdain for Rackeye and claim she had heard rumors of Helvetic military in the area. So far, this had only been met with sympathetic, but otherwise blank, stares.
“Lots of strange people pass through these areas,” farmers would respond. “Explorers, prospectors, migrants—never seen Helvets, though. They prefer to keep to themselves, shut up in their city.”
Kayla was beginning to despair, fearing that they would return empty-handed to the safe house, where she would be seen as a fool.
As the others discussed routes, a trio of drivers at a nearby table glanced over at them. It was not unusual for the team to draw male attention, but the men looked concerned—hostile even. Eventually, one of them pushed back his chair and walked over, drawing himself up to his full height and glaring angrily at them.
“You lot mind explaining who you are and what your business is around these parts?” he demanded.
Kayla gave him a careless smile. “What’s it to you, cabby?” she asked, using the local slang term.
“You talk like you’re from around here, girl,” the man replied calmly, “but your friends surely ‘aint. I’m hearing from the fellas that your group has been up and down these roads asking questions about I don’t know what. Frankly, I don’t care. We don’t need a bunch of off-world strangers sticking their noses into our business.”
The other truck drivers loudly voiced their agreement, and the rest of the crowded breakfast room went quiet.
Kayla’s blood began to boil. “Listen, buddy—”
Zhang waved her into silence. “You’re right—we’re off-worlders,” she said politely to their interrogator. “Investigators, actually. My young friend hired us to look into the recent kidnappings. We have reason to think that the League military is involved, and we want to find out the truth, and maybe help the victims’ families find some justice.”
“Off-worlders don’t give a toss about families on Caldera,” the trucker said.
“You’re wrong,” Zhang replied, and played into her role. “Lots of people hate Helvets just as much as you do. Their corruption is everyone’s problem.”
The man stared back at her, thinking carefully. Eventually, he shrugged. “You got a problem with Helvets, go deal with it somewhere else. We take care of our own problems, and we don’t need your pity.”
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He turned back to his table, but Kayla had decided she’d had enough.
“Hey—screw you, asshole!” she yelled, as she slammed a fist down on the table. “My name’s Kayla Barnes and I lost my father to those things roaming around out there. His name was Rolf Barnes, and he was well respected up in Zula.”
A few of the drivers muttered as they appeared to recognize the name.
“You’ve got no right telling me how I find justice for his death, so how about you mind your own damn business!” she snapped.
The man looked somewhat diminished after this dressing down.
“Miss, I’m sorry your father was killed—” he began.
Kayla was not remotely in the mood to let him continue. “No, I’m done talking to you. Tell it to someone who cares.” She turned away and reached for her fork as she started to shovel food approximately into her mouth.
The room returned slowly to its idle chatter, while the shame faced man stood frozen in place, staring at the floor. After a few moments, he pulled up a seat next to the four women.
“I’m sorry, I spoke out of turn,” he said.
The others smiled sympathetically, but Kayla ignored him, even though she received a sharp kick from Christie under the table. She had forgotten how pig-headed her fellow colonists could be when they wanted, and she was both alarmed, and slightly ashamed, to discover how upsetting that was. She was, after all, only trying to save the entire damned planet.
“My name’s Jorge. Jorge Anistor.”
Zhang’s smile was both welcoming and forgiving. “Everyone is on edge with all that’s going on lately, but I appreciate you talking to us, Jorge.”
“It’s true, and I’m sure you ladies mean well.” He paused. “You learn not to trust outsiders out here. Sooner or later they take you over and you lose everything you worked for to a bunch of faceless, power hungry bureaucrats.”
“Helvets don’t have any limits to their ambition,” Zhang agreed.
Kayla felt a slight chill as she kept her eyes on her plate. The intelligence agent was obviously comfortable saying whatever was necessary to get the answers she wanted, and Kayla wondered how much of her personality was genuine. Would Christie end up like that, too? Would she?
“I know they’re dirty,” Jorge continued, “and maybe they would stoop so low as to sending out monstrosities to attack honest, hardworking folk. But I’ll tell you right now, nobody’s heard anything about Helvet military walking around the Lanstead plain looking for trouble. I don’t know where you heard that, but it’s pretty unlikely. We don’t take kindly to those types,” he said with an embarrassed chuckle.
“We appreciate any information you can provide.”
“Strangers pass through all the time. Maybe explorers, or prospectors looking for some exotic mineral, or just new colonists looking for a patch of empty land. There’s no way to tell where they’re from, and they mostly keep to themselves.”
“You have to admit,” Urtiga pointed out, “It’s kind of strange that the disappearances and the animal attacks both originated in this area. Somebody has got to be up to something.”
“Nothing but farms around here, I can guarantee you that,” he said firmly. “Anyway, you’re mistaken—this isn’t where the first incident happened.”
Christie’s brow creased. “What do you mean? The first animal attack was on the Straythe estate—year fifty-seven on your calendar, wasn’t it?”
“Jorge, don’t you go telling them that story,” one of the truck drivers called over. “You know that’s nothing but a pack of nonsense.”
Jorge turned and scowled. “Back off Carl, they asked for information, didn’t they?”
“You know full well that fool got himself lost in the mountains.”
“You don’t know Owen like I did—he was careful.”
The other trucker shook his head. “Careful doesn’t mean a thing in the mountains, not when bad weather closes in. He wandered off alone like a damn fool and ended up walking right off a cliff. Take my word for it.”
“Shut your mouth talking about things you don’t understand!” Jorge snapped, jabbing his finger out at the other man.
Carl waved him off and settled to grumbling to the other truck drivers about people who hiked alone into unknown territory, and how they were all damned fools who got what they deserved.
The women waited patiently for Jorge to calm down.
He sighed heavily as he turned back to the table. “A friend of mine, Owen Shelden, liked to go off hiking in the mountains, and one day he never came back. That was two weeks before the first attack. Now pay no attention to what that idiot was saying; Owen knew exactly what he was doing. He had been up into those peaks for twenty years and knew them like the back of his hand. He knew the weather patterns, and he had excellent gear. Level-headed too, unlike some of the adrenaline junkies you hear about on the bulletin boards. No way he just disappeared. For me, that was the first attack, because something got him for sure.”
Zhang nodded carefully, while Christie frantically scrolled her tablet’s display.
Feeling a little calmer, Kayla looked back at Jorge. “Was he from around here?” she asked.
“No, he was from Maria, about a hundred miles closer to Rackeye. But he liked to drive down for his hiking because these are the tallest peaks in the range, see?”
“That sounds like something we should look into,” Zhang said with a nod. “I suppose his property was sold on?”
Carl shook his head. “No. When the attacks started happening people were scared, and his old place was forgotten about.”
He gave them the address and expressed his hope that it led to something useful. They thanked him for the information, and as they got up to leave, he reached out and grabbed Kayla’s arm.
“I’m sorry about what I said. I didn’t know your father, but I’d heard of him. Good man—good man.”
Kayla nodded. “Thanks,” she said awkwardly.
“Good to see his little girl’s doing something about it. Can’t say fairer than that. I lost mine. My daughter, I mean. She’d be about your age now.” He blinked and looked away as his eyes moistened.
Kayla felt heat soak through her body as she watched the man. Unbeknownst to the people of Caldera, an entire task force of elite soldiers was preparing to put down the perpetrators of their nightmares for the last ten years. She would only be a small part of the operation, but in that moment she knew she’d rather die than let Allana Rayker, or any of her thugs, leave the planet alive.
When Jorge met her gaze again, she spoke bluntly. “I’m going to kill them all. All of them we find.”
He was stunned for a moment. Then he nodded, and she saw that he believed her.
Urtiga drove their truck down the main paved road, heading north, eager to follow up on the promising new lead.
Christie was still thumbing through her tablet and looking glum. “I checked the animal attacks from ten years ago. I didn’t check for disappearances,” she explained in an annoyed tone.
“Even if you had, it would have been a weird datapoint that didn’t fit,” Zhang pointed out. “Wouldn’t have helped until we actually asked someone about it.”
Christie paused, lost in thought. “If Kayla wasn’t here, we would be helpless.”
“You’re welcome,” Kayla said, wrapping her arm around her friend’s shoulder.
“But it shouldn’t be like that. What happens when we get to the next problem on a world we know nothing about?”
“Then we do what we can,” Zhang said. “And if that doesn’t work, we keep trying new things until we stumble on a solution.”
Christie pouted. “That sounds inefficient.”
“Sure,” Urtiga said with a laugh. “It’s called life. Not everything you need to know is in a database. Sorry if you’re just figuring that out.”
Christie turned to watch the mountains slowly passing by and sighed. “It’s so wild out here, it’s beautiful. And a little scary.”
“Welcome to the world of the colonial peasant.” Kayla grinned as she squeezed her friend’s shoulder. “If you want to fit in, you might want to stop dressing up so nice.”