Midnight Hollow, Road to Hayyam
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.2.12 Interstellar
Janus and Fury were halfway back to the vehicles when Mick met them coming the other way, pack on his back and rifle raised. “You all right?” the Hunter asked.
“Yeah,” Janus said, grinning. “Rock crab.”
“I heard the rock crab. What in the stars was the other thing?”
“Fury.”
Mick lowered his weapon and looked at the flame dog. “You’re kidding. This little thing?”
Fury looked up at Janus, tongue lolling out of her mouth, and he reached down to pat her side. “This little thing.”
Mick grunted. “Well, come on, then, mate. Lira has grub set out, and Ryler got some news from Nikandros you’re going to want to hear.”
Janus nodded, and the three of them made their way back to the road.
As they walked around the buggies, the smell of Lira’s cooking greeted them.
“You found him!” Lira said, standing up from the pot. “Janus, what were you thinking?”
Koni and Ryler stood up, too, both looking somber.
“It’s okay,” Janus said. “I just needed to clear my head. We’ve had a rough start to the race.”
“About that,” Lira said. “I was wrong. Koni was right.”
Janus blinked. “Well, this has been a day full of surprises. What in the Void did I miss?”
“Nikandros had sent me messages,” Ryler said. “He thought we were dead. The Verazlan team that took our old route got ambushed.”
“I saw the smoke on the horizon, northwest of us,” Mick said grimly.
Janus looked at Koni. “I think we all owe you an apology.”
“Save your apologies, coldsider,” Koni said, her voice bitter. “I fed more of my people into the fire because of you.”
Lira frowned. “That’s not—”
Janus stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, then turned back to Koni. “It’s okay. We cost you your cousin. I hope the people in the other team made it out, but I’m still grateful and indebted to you for saving our lives.”
Koni held his gaze for a second, then nodded.
“Let’s eat!” Janus said, slapping the Verazlan woman’s shoulder. They’d almost died without even knowing it, and some people likely had died. At minimum, people who hadn’t deserved it had been hurt or taken out of the race, but Janus knew there was only so much hurt and blame a person could take in one day.
Lira had outdone herself. She must have made the soup and stewed meat before, when they were waiting for the race to start, and she’d added xythaxian grain, cabbage leaves, onions, limes, radishes, and a fatty red fruit to it. “These are fresh! When did you have time?”
“I’m a pack rat, Janus,” Lira said. “You think Pasha didn’t teach me to grab what I needed on the go?”
“I suppose he would have,” Janus said. “What’s it called?”
“Red Pozole,” Lira said. “Or close to it. The locals have lost track of some of the heirloom Earth plants since they’ve been here.”
“Yeah, I know,” Janus said with a crooked grin. “I’m the one you come to for substitutes.”
“Right. Well, some of them have grown on me.”
“That’s a good one,” Mick said, his mouth full.
Everyone looked at him.
“Substitute plants? They’ve grown on her?”
“Booooooooo!” Ryler said, and they all laughed.
Fury had curled up next to Janus’s feet. He swallowed an overly large mouthful, coughed, and said, “Hey, Ryler? Can you use that connection to Nikandros to find out where the comp team is?”
Ryler shook his head. “That would be cheating. Anything I send is reviewed by an impartial arbiter, and the price we’d pay for even bending the rules would be to give the comps an even bigger advantage.”
“I guess that’s a good thing,” Janus said, taking another bite.
“We’ll still know where they are,” Ryler said, wiping his mouth. “At each checkpoint, when we put the data cube on the pedestal, we’ll collect the information uploaded to it, including the team placements in the race. We know the waypoints they’ve been assigned, and I know how the scores are calculated. I should be able to estimate a rough position.”
“Then, we can find them,” Koni said.
Janus shook his head. “No. We can’t afford to do that.” Koni glared at him, but Janus looked right back at her. “I know I didn’t know Copecki as well as you did, but these people—including Brago—may have been part of a group that killed my parents a long time ago. Mick’s people lost their home. Lira’s mom was killed, too.”
Lira looked shocked. “You really think that? That it’s them.”
Janus shrugged. “There were dozens of aspirants in the kill teams at Prometheus Base. You saw Brago’s team. They haven’t aged as much as they should have.” He looked at Ryler.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
“It’s possible,” the cultist said noncommittally.
Janus turned back to Koni. “The point is, we all have reasons to want revenge against Brago’s team, but if we don’t win the Trials, a lot more people are going to die.”
“They’re going to keep doing it!” Koni said.
“Probably,” Janus said. “I know this isn’t the way things have worked for you until now, but sometimes the other side is stronger, and you just have to take it. It’s five of us or thousands of my people. Maybe more.”
Koni looked at him. It probably seemed like an exaggeration to her, and Janus considered telling her the truth about who they were and where they were from.
“After we win the Trials,” Koni said, “we get revenge.”
Janus nodded, relieved. “I owe you for saving us today. I won’t forget.”
The team ate the rest of their meal in silence, packed up camp, and got back into their buggies, swapping drivers so Lira and Janus could rest. Not that it was easy with Koni at the wheel.
“I should have spent more time practicing on the way from Cofan to Twilight Hollow,” she admitted after nearly running them into a tree.
Janus didn’t answer. He was trying to stay in an in-between state, watching the road but resting his body. This was the worst possible stretch for Koni to finally take driving seriously, but that was why she was in front with Mick following.
Everyone was going to have to step up if they were going to win.
But it wouldn’t have to be today. To Janus’s relief, the road dried up, and the jungle got less wild after the first hour of Koni driving. The Verazlan was able to step on the gas and make some serious progress safely.
That meant Janus could get some sleep. “Wake me up when it’s my turn to drive.”
“You’re taking another turn?” Koni asked.
Janus turned in the straps, trying to wedge himself into a comfortable position. “We all are. After that first leg and what happened on the other road, we need to get as far ahead as possible.”
“We’ll need at least some rest,” Koni said. “The first stop is a Pugarian village, and they’re no better than animals.”
“You know that’s offensive, right?” Janus said, lifting his head to stare at her.
The comm crackled to life, and Lira’s voice sounded in his ear. “I hate that she said it out loud, but she’s not completely wrong.”
***
SSFG-04 Survivor’s Voice
Orbit of Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.2.12 Interstellar
Architect Donnika walked toward the briefing room, steeling herself against the unpleasantness of what she was about to do. She understood the necessity. Unlike the savages on Krandermore and all the generations of humans before them, the Cult of the Survivor could not afford to fight a war against itself. There weren’t enough of them left, and with the means at their disposal, they were more than capable of wiping each other out.
And if the Cult was gone, who would take care of the people of Survivors Refuge?
The door to the ship’s briefing room opened automatically as she approached, and the room’s occupants looked at her as she walked in. There was Wayfinder Psorayan, a neotraditionalist; Zerneel, a collaborativist who refused to recognize Cult ranks; Compiler Uzu, of the nihilists; and Observer Hamilton of the matriarchate. These were the arbitrators, representatives of different factions of the Cult who had come to observe the Trials and make sure that the experiment was conducted fairly. The notion that “fairness” should come into it was insulting to Donnika.
And then there was Architect Nikandros, her only “peer,” the representative and leader of the exceptionalists. “Donnika!” he said warmly. “Our host has finally arrived!”
“I didn’t invite you, Nikandros. I should be containing the infection on Irkalla, not playing games here, with you.”
Nikandros leaned toward the arbitrators. “By containment, she means genocide.”
“We’re aware of what she means,” Hamilton said coldly. “Psorayan wrote the protocols for it, and I trained the aspirants after they were harvested.”
“You’re all complicit in murder,” Zerneel said.
“We are all complicit,” Nikandros agreed. “That’s what the Cult’s governance model implies, Donnika, and so we must all be given the opportunity to choose.”
Donnika dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands. Nikandros was playing with the future of the human species.
The compartmentalists had been leading the Cult’s regrowth programs for over a thousand years without a single mass die-off like in Krandermore’s early days or during the Mercurian uprising. They should have been grateful instead of getting in her way.
“Your attempt to prevent Invarian from registering went against the spirit of the experiment,” Zerneel said. “You didn’t break the rules explicitly, but we’re inclined to penalize you for it.”
Donnika rolled her eyes and sat at the table. “What else is new, Zerneel? Your faction is just a mouthpiece for others to speak through,” she said, eyes flicking toward Nikandros.
Zerneel’s face was synthetic, but her throat reddened.
“Zerneel was opposed to the penalty,” Hamilton said. “The rest of us are in favor.”
Donnika was surprised. She’d been pleased the matriarchate was included among the arbitrators, if only because Donnika’s gender gave her a small but significant preference. “What kind of penalty are you suggesting?”
“The Verazlan woman, Koni Atl-Verazlan,” Psorayan said, leaning forward on the table. “We think she might be more important to this region’s future.”
Donnika frowned. “Maybe before her husband died.”
“Actually, because of it,” Psorayan said. “We feel that the death of her family, followed by the more recent death of her cousin, has put her on a path to change the relationships between most of the regional factions. The Oracle of Lumiara agrees.”
Donnika stiffened at the mention of the Oracle. That made this go from speculation to certainty. “She’s a warmongering lunatic. If events have pushed her to primacy—”
“Events?” Zarneel said, almost snarling the word. “You had a man beaten to death.”
“Not to mention the harvesting program set up the conditions for her husband and son to die,” Uzu said, speaking for once instead of brooding on the meaninglessness of it all.
Donnika wanted to space the lot of them. They wept at her killing a few outliers, and they didn’t lift a finger when Nikandros did the same. He’d been there, at the Survivor’s Grace settlement, when an entire recovery team died. Just because she couldn’t prove he’d killed them, he was allowed to sit there, protected instead of being stripped of his rank and privileges.
“Regardless of reasons,” Donnika said, annoyed that Nikandros was staying silent while the arbitrators did his work for him, “she’s already tried to kill hundreds of people—”
“How interesting,” Nikandros said, steepling his hands on the table in front of him. “Isn’t that what you’re planning on doing?”
Donnika closed her mouth and glared at him. This was exactly the kind of trap Nikandros loved to set. If the Oracle thought Koni was important, it wouldn’t be a small thing. It might even extend to a neighboring region. But if Donnika argued for Koni’s death, she undermined her faction’s past and future actions. “Fine,” she said. “It’s only a region anyway. We need to focus on the bigger picture.”
“I agree,” Nikandros said with a smirk. “You were talking about a penalty?”
Zerneel nodded. “Normally, Koni’s impact would fall outside this arbitration. Her recruitment happened before the Trials started, and any changes she might cause will happen after it finishes. We’ve decided that the Oracle’s prediction of her impact will be included in Team Invarian’s score.”
Donnika was about to protest, and then she stopped herself. “This would have a positive impact on their score?”
“It’s uncertain,” Uzu said.
“It isn’t,” Hamilton said. “A powerful woman is exactly what this region needs to pull its act together.”
Zerneel scowled at the matriarchate representative. “The situation is a bit more… dynamic than that, and you know I take issue with your assumptions about gender.”
Nikandros watched Donnika over his clasped hands, waiting for her to react.
Donnika looked at him triumphantly. “I think we should make sure Team Invarian receives credit for its actions right away. I move that the Oracle’s predictions be updated as frequently as possible.”
She’d won. She didn’t care how “exceptional” Janus Invarian or Koni Atl-Verazlan were. Including a long-term impact would kill their score if it was negative, and if it was positive? She smiled like the Devil Herself.
The death of two of Nikandros’s pets and his protégé might be enough to give the exceptionalists a meaningful setback—perhaps enough to knock them from their perch as the second most influential of the sixty-three main factions.
As the arbitrators agreed to her suggestion, the only doubt that spoiled her victory was that Nikandros looked like he thought he’d won, too.