The high priestess and old Waterwalker sat on the entrance side of the offering table. A big, ugly man had barged his way to the front of the line and stood peering down at them, looming.
The high priestess studied his donation as old Waterwalker raised the template from the table and applied it to his tech. The readout flashed with bars full across all levels. This tech was too good. She didn’t doubt he had stolen or even killed for it. She didn’t trust this man, but without someone declaring he was forfeit, they still had to give the credits. Something like this would have been traded outside the city with the ambassador, not brought a day's walk to the pyramid and given to the Sisters as an offering.
This is the counsellor’s man.
The priestess let her gaze go beyond old Waterwalker to the gliders in the distance, and then back to the big man. He was dressed like a Wayfarer, but he was far too plump and full of easy living and bullying to be a Wayfarer.
“I offer the praise of The People to your office,” the big man recited.
“And The Sisters of the Cloistered receive your tribute. It will sustain the tower for a time until the earth and its people may be restored,” Waterwalker responded. The big man was already sweating from the morning heat.
Waterwalker placed the tech in the table chest and lifted a small pouch of credit coins. She laid a fair handful of them onto the tabletop. The big man collected up the coins with one hand. The other arm he left wrapped up inside his long sash.
The high priestess watched the orangutan and the two girls. They moved the gliders up out of their lashings and tethered them to the guy wire. He had paid heed to her message. They were getting ready. The professor said she would launch the drone soon. It was all the high priestess could do to keep her gaze forward and away from the sky.
It is beginning. Raj thought.
He felt an exhilaration he hadn’t felt for years. Since he had been far younger. The thrill of adventure. He hoped he was ready. He was not sure the girls were, but there was no more time. He ran through a final check of their gliders.
The girls made their way to him; they had been copying his preparations and had donned their harnesses. Ishi’s cloak was long, and the extra material to allow her to glide hung down from beneath the long sleeves. Her thinness and grey skin wrapped in the long dark cloth made her look like a death wraith from a stage play of horrors.
“At this time of day? So early?” Kalla asked, looking at the dark opening that had appeared in the side of the pyramid and the line of worshipers that led up to it. She wore her desert tan cloak, and her beautiful hair shone gold in the sunlight.
“Have the priestesses ever emerged before noon?”
“Never,” Raj replied. “But I want you to concentrate on being ready now.” He ticked down his mental list in order of importance; “You have your water skins? You have some food? You have—”
“Yes, Raj,” Kalla cut him off in exasperation. “How many times will you say this? Why are you so worried?”
He ignored her questions. “Whatever happens, no matter what, the most important—”
“Yes. We know.” And she continued in a sing-song pantomime, “The most important thing is to activate the optical locks and guide the Wayfarers to where the drone will go, which we now know will be the mine redoubt number eight.”
He looked to Ishi, and she made the “affirmative” sign. Her expression was one of complete commitment.
Raj glanced across to the high priestess where she sat at the receiving table. The big man was there now, a small line of people behind him. He was picking his coin up from the second priestess at the table.
“Listen—” he began.
“Really, Raj. What else are you going to tell us that you have not already told us so many times before?” Kalla said.
“Possibly, you could stop speaking for a moment, and you may find out.”
“If anything should happen to me, this won’t be a safe place for you. You will go immediately and join the Wayfarers. Do you understand?”
He could see that Kalla was about to say something, but she caught Ishi’s curt hand gesture and closed her mouth.
He continued, “… trust them. You both know where the cache is if you have to return here. I have left all the remaining coin and credits in there. The Sisters will tell you who you can trust to pay your way to the closest Wayfarer camp. Stay there. You’ll be safe.”
The howling scream of a plummeting drone interrupted them.
A sphere plunged towards them, banked through a tight angle, and shot a north reach out into the deep desert. It glinted with a bright silver sheen. Raj marvelled at the billow of fog that it pressed from the air as it cornered. He knew that took a massive amount of power. A force like that would rip their flimsy gliders into ribbons.
The drone zipped towards the horizon, nearly skipping off the top of the tallest dunes.
Both girls stood staring. They had never witnessed a drone launch before.
He grasped them and pulled them into a quick hug. “Fly now,” he said quickly and released them.
Over the girls’ shoulders, Raj saw the big man crash through the offering table as he ran towards them—towards the drone.
Ishi paused, clutching her sister’s arm. She signed to her with one hand.
“Yes, Ishi. I promise. I will meet you there.” She clutched the little girl in a sudden hug.
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Ishi snapped on her goggles and hooked her harness. She tugged the tether, released it, and her glider came alive. She leaped, and with a metal “zzzzip” along the guy wire, she was gone.
Kalla screamed a warning. Raj turned and saw the big man pull a long weapon.
An energy javelin. Raj knew. How did he know that? The SAS. What was the SAS? He wondered these things all in a split second. There was no way it could still work. The missile would be ancient. But the big man was certainly acting like it would work.
He was taking aim far over the desert to the north. At the drone. He was going to shoot down the drone—or Ishi. He held it aimed with both arms just fine. His arms were fine. He had been concealing the javelin the entire time with that one arm wrapped in his robes. The javelin would collapse to half its length for carrying.
Raj wondered, How do I know these things?
Raj saw the priestesses scramble up from behind the offering table. They knocked a few of the worshipers down onto the stone, and the Sisters rushed up behind the big man. Raj could tell they would be too slow to stop him. The missile needed to be stopped, not the man.
He had targeted the drone/Ishi and was about to fire.
Raj couldn’t take the chance that the rocket was too old to work.
Even if the Sisters do tackle him, he thought, if the missile is fired, it will still track.
Then he saw that the one priestess had split away from the others, and she went to light the signal flares.
Now, everyone would be aware of the drone launch. This just turned into an all-out race.
He turned and grasped Kalla’s harness with all his strength and stopped the girl and her glider from launching. The pain in his hands flared white hot. She swung and settled back, her feet touching the stone.
“Wha…!” she exclaimed. He reached into his tunic and grasped the map tube with the small package. He stuffed it into the girl’s satchel.
“You have memorized the map. You must go to The Beast now. You know where he is.”
“But I… THE BEAST!? You said he’ll kill…”
“Just talk to him, and he won’t kill you! Do not follow a pod. Go to The Beast.” He let her go, and she zipped down the line and shot into the air. Gone.
He turned and grasped his own yoke. His hands moved clumsily, but he concentrated on fastening his harness through the pain. He did not have time to fumble, and he did not fumble now. He kicked loose the tether and released the tether brake.
That old exultation of lift. Weightlessness. He felt the air take him. The weight and ache were gone from his legs, from his back. He had transformed. He was young again. The buoyant freedom made him smile like he was greeting an old friend.
SAS could fight in the air! Could fight anywhere! What does that mean? Where are these memories coming from?
The wind was strong in his chute. His glider accelerated, and his clip zinged along the line, higher and faster, the sound increasing in tone, then the jerk and release at the end of the tether, and he was free, his chute and the desert floor falling away below him. The familiar rip of wind in his eyes made them water, and he saw the wings of the girl’s gliders. Ishi was behind, heading to the airship. Kalla was in front of him.
He stayed on the north track with Kalla and the drone in front of him and the rocket behind him.
He looked behind him. Blurry vision still, and he rubbed his eyes against the cloth on his shoulders. The streak of the projectile surprised him.
Already launched. You’re getting slow, Captain… What?
A narrow black streamer was rising towards him. The javelin had worked, and it was fast. It was close. But he was too high. It was below him. He pulled hard on the frame and drove his body weight forward, his descent so rapid his legs struck the glider wings. Nearly straight down, he dove, nose into the desert, to intercept that deadly rip of black smoke.
Professor Adoria Seelo leaned towards the display in the curved glass of the space station.
“Is this the best you can do?”
“Yes, Professor. We have the magnification on the view screen set to maximum.”
The professor and the droid watched as the drone levelled off over the desert and sped north. For a brief moment, she caught a blur of figures on the surface—people on the outside upper levels of the pyramid.
“Sensors have detected a rocket signature.”
“Is it being fired at our drone?”
“That cannot be verified, but it should be assumed.”
“After eight hundred years, someone has a rocket down there? Keep tracking that drone. Don’t lose sight of it. Can we switch to a visual from the drone?” She watched the viewscreen as the magnification was increased, became pixilated, and the image of the drone was lost.
“Give me a view of that drone, damnit!” She thumped her hand down onto the console at her front. Since she had been awake, a workstation, stasis bed, and hydroponic station had been put in place for her. The wall to her front switched perspective, and the display changed to one rushing fast and low over the desert floor.
“How long will it take the drone to reach the vault?”
“Approximately six to ten minutes. It is flying at below the speed of sound, but sensors lack atmospheric conditions that are needed to make exact calculations.”
Adoria settled down into her chair and watched the terrain roll out in front of her.
“The high priestess is attempting to contact you from the surface.”
“How?”
“We have been lip-reading any communications through the optical sensor she carries whenever it is in proper alignment.”
“Put her on a smaller screen for me, superimposed. I don’t want to lose the drone feed.”
An image of the woman from the night before appeared. Her hood was down. Bald head, full green tattoos. Her lips were moving. She must have been speaking directly to the sensor as she held it facing her.
In the larger image, Adoria watched as the drone zipped over a long expanse of sand dunes and then climbed over a ridge. Beyond the ridge, the terrain changed to stone. Then, she saw piles of shale arranged in a multitude of perfect mounds among water. After that, the ground fell away over the stone-cut steps of an open pit mine. An array of broken machinery lay strewn across the mine floor. Then the view swung in a tight turn, but before it did, through a cleft in the mine wall, the top of the central tower could be seen.
“That is the top of the collapsed central tower.”
They watched as the image zoomed into the mine complex and slowed as it travelled up the slope of a processing room. It passed the large bulk of a single rock caterpillar track. At the top rear of the processing room, it came to an open set of double doors that were labelled “CONTROL ROOM.” Cautiously, it hovered through the doors and came to a halt in a much smaller room.
A bulky creature that had been sheltering in the room stood up and peered at the drone. The figure was covered with a thick, heavy pelt.
“That creature looks threatening. Is there another access point into the mine?”
“No. This is the only one that remains. Rock falls, slides, and erosion have most likely closed all the other access points. This is the last point of access. The drone can dock into the drone station above the doors, and we will have to activate the internal workings remotely from this port.”
“Just open the doors.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“They have been secured with top-tier intelligent locks. Liquid metal.”
“Ok, then what opens those locks?”
“Proof of compassion.”
“WHAT?! Proof of compassion?”
“Who did that? Who programmed those locks?”
“I did, Professor.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. So, you’re telling me the machinery will transfer conscious human minds into the last two ratite avatars, and they won’t be able to get out?
“Unless compassion—”
“There is no way anyone will be able to open those doors. Those locks will be impervious to anything but compassion? Really? My god!” She thumped the console again. “Why would you do such a foolish thing?”
“To promote goodness.”
“What do you know about goodness?”
“I am learning.”
“Never mind. We have to release those avatars so they can get to that crashed space station. Let’s talk to our old green lady down there and see if she can help us.”