Part II: Emissary

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”—Leon C. Megginson, Speech About Darwinism

On the Road to Midnight Hollow

Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge

4453.2.9 Interstellar

Janus scanned the treeline as he climbed out into the drizzling rain and kicked the door to his buggy shut. They’d parked the buggies near a recently cleared area that might have been a research camp or a hunting camp at some point in the recent past. There were no city lights to spoil the view, and Janus could see a few stars through the breaks in the clouds. The unique system of evaporation and condensation caused by Krandermore’s locked orbit meant that the sun-side of the twilight valley, while never in direct sunlight, received small but biologically useful amounts of glow. Midnight Hollow was the halfway mark, where that effect ended and true starlit night began.

It was nearly the end of their second week on the road. He, Lira, and Mick had fallen right back into the routine of hard driving, maintenance, and shelter they’d had to follow on Irkalla. They could have rolled straight into the Trials if it had just been them.

Unfortunately, getting Ryler and Koni up to speed was turning out to be the hardest part of the journey.

It felt good to be out of the cab after being cramped in the buggy for so long. They were driving eight to twelve hours a day to make it to Midnight Hollow, the starting point for this region’s Trials. They drove for that long so they could go slower, sparing the buggies' suspensions at the expense of the drivers. When they weren’t driving or sleeping, they were going through endless drills to try to bond as a team.

It wasn’t working. The first day, he’d tried training them like Uncle Ivan had with him—all hard-assery and never being satisfied—but that was an utter failure. Mick and Lira cooperated, but he could tell it was because they were trying to support him, not because it was doing anything to help them. Ryler seemed hesitant until Janus started telling him exactly what he expected, and then the cultist rapidly improved. Koni, on the other hand, shut down almost immediately. She wasn’t used to being told what to do, and she wasn’t interested in trying.

The soft approach had been worse. He’d tried reasoning with her, and she’d laughed in his face before walking away.

Ryler, at least, was learning, although he was clearly not used to the kind of exertion Mick required of them during the strength and conditioning sessions. Janus’s old friend had a lot of theoretical knowledge about Krandermore and what it took to move through the jungles of sun-side, but he needed experience to make that knowledge practical and reflexive. That, and Janus still hadn’t figured Ryler out. Things would be going fine, and Janus would almost convince himself to trust his old friend, but then that damned stiffness would be there, hanging around his eyes, pulling his smile just a little too wide.

Ryler was hiding things from them, things that mattered, things that would get them killed. Janus was sure of it. It was Irkalla all over again, with the cult leading them into danger with half-truths and outright deceptions. It made Janus less charitable than he could have been when Ryler couldn’t push through the fatigue.

Koni didn’t have that problem. She was in great shape and used to surviving the jungles of her world. She just didn’t care. While Ryler had shown improvement over the past two weeks, Koni had only gotten more obstinate. It made the few moments of the journey that weren’t exhausting enormously frustrating. She had no desire to be part of their team, even if running in the Trials should have been an honor for any Krandermoran, let alone someone so far out of her clan’s good graces.

He’d told the others to use the break to clear their heads. They could all use some time apart.

Janus raised his outstretched arms to the noticeably darker sky and put his hands on top of his head. He’d survived over a decade of getting stepped on by entitled pricks back on Irkalla. He’d survive a few weeks with Koni, one way or another.

They were almost at Midnight Hollow. He’d tried to give the team as much time to come together as he could, but they were going to get there with barely enough time to register, get last-minute supplies, and start the race.

He regretted that. The team would suffer for it, and he hated that they were just passing through. He’d never had the chance to come this far east, and it would have been nice to stay a while. Even a cursory look around him told him there were animals and plants here he’d never seen around Cofan. There were so many ecological niches and distinct biomes on this planet that he could have spent his life cataloging them without ever running out of new discoveries.

He heard growling and hissing from the back of the buggy.

“All right, all right.” With a grunt, he hauled the fire-retardant carrier out of the back of the buggy and gingerly set it on the ground. He popped the latch and opened the grate.

The flame dog hesitated for only a moment before climbing out. She looked at him. He nodded and waved her on. After a few cautious steps, she sniffed an ochre flower with long curly petals, wrinkling her nose, and opened her maw wide to devour it.

“I still can’t believe you brought that thing,” Lira said, walking up next to him, taking a bite out of some jerky before tossing some to the specimen. The flame dog snapped her head from the bush she was inspecting and pounced on the jerky, sparks and curls of smoke filling her mouth as she gobbled it down.

“No choice,” Janus replied as he watched the flame dog wander a little further, inspecting each plant as it passed, doing its own analysis as to what was edible. “If I’d left her, someone else would have taken the credit—and the credits—for the research.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Lira threw another piece of jerky, and the flame dog bounded after it.

“More than that, she’s growing at an unbelievable rate. It’s like she’s metabolizing nutrients into mass as fast as I can feed her. I need her with me, or I’ll miss important stages in her development.”

Lira watched the flame dog burn the jerky before swallowing it. “You say it like she’s your kid or something.”

“She’s a specimen. She’s a treasure trove of exotic biology.”

“More like a liability.”

Janus winked at her. “She’ll grow on you. If anything, a Motragi settlement would do anything to have her. She’s portable wealth.”

Lira gave the flame dog a second, more appraising look. Biology might bore her, but leverage was something she lived and breathed.

Janus cleared his throat. “Speaking of people not pulling their weight, what are we going to do about Koni?”

Lira nodded. “I was wondering if you’d bring that up. I really wanted her to work out, you know? She reminds me of how I used to be.”

“You weren’t that bad.”

“Really?”

Janus grinned. “You were a lot worse. Our fight was personal, even though I didn’t understand that at the time. Once we sorted that out, we worked well together. I’m worried that, with Koni, it’s just arrogance, plain and simple. Any idea how to fix her?”

Lira raised an eyebrow. “Blow her out an airlock?”

Janus winced. A failed airlock was what forced them to run the Trials on Irkalla together. It also killed over a dozen people. “Too soon.”

Lira flashed him a rare grin. “It’s always going to be too soon, isn’t it?

“Yeah. So, what do we do?”

Lira kicked a mushroom cap the size of a dinner plate, and it went tumbling into a puddle. “Nikandros wouldn’t have put her on our team unless he thought she improved our chances.”

“What happens if she escalates past insubordination?”

“You mean like actual sabotage?” Lira asked. “I don’t think she’d do that, but she could definitely make our lives difficult.”

“I think she could make our lives short. Maybe she’ll do us a favor and slip away.”

“She won’t do that either,” Lira said, tossing the flame dog another piece of jerky. “She’s honor-bound to stay with us. Verazlans take their honor seriously.”

“Fine. Then I’ll free her from the debt.”

Lira made a face.

Janus sighed. “I can’t do that either, can I?”

“She’s here fulfilling a clan debt. You can forgive it, but then she’d owe you, and the clan wouldn’t owe her.”

“Void take them, these people are complicated,” Janus said, crossing his arms and leaning against the buggy.

“We can leave her in Midnight Hollow. At this point, she isn’t part of the solution; she’s the entirety of the problem.”

“Hey,” Mick said, and Janus almost jumped out of his skin.

“Damn it, Mick,” Lira hissed. “Stop sneaking up on people!”

The Hunter grinned. “Just keeping you sharp.”

Janus looked around. Ryler was out trying to get a transmission to Nikandros, and Koni was grudgingly helping him. “Let’s take a walk.”

He started to walk away from vehicles. Mick and Lira followed.

“What are we talking about?” Mick asked.

“Ditching Koni,” Janus said.

Lira winced. “Actually, we’re not.”

“We’re not?” Janus asked.

Lira shook her head. “We need a high-ranking Verazlan to take a Verazlan slot in the Trials.”

“Solved,” Janus said. “We’ll run as independents. Never liked the Verazlans anyway.”

This time, it was Mick’s turn to suck his teeth. “Yeah, that’s not going to work, boss. Heard the indies all got ganged up on by the clan teams, year after year, so they made independent teams illegal.”

“Because they kept losing?” Janus asked.

“Because they kept dying,” Mick answered. “No indie team crossed the finish line in fifty years before the ban.”

“Okay… What about the Motragi?”

“They appoint their teams by committee. We’re about five months too late for that to be a possibility.”

“Pugarians?”

“Are you secretly wealthy? Because you’d need to assemble the wealth of several good-sized villages to bribe our way into a slot, and someone might buy it right out from under us before the race.”

Janus blew a long sigh out. He still liked the Pugarian plan. Under that scenario, if they failed, they’d still be wealthy. If the original plan didn’t work, they’d still have Koni.

“How important is Koni?” Janus asked. “Do we know?”

“She’s main branch of the ruling family. It doesn’t get much higher up the food chain.”

Mick was surprised. “So, she’s royalty?”

“She might even be the oldest child.”

Janus wasn’t amused. “Void slag me sideways. I hate aristocrats.”

Lira stiffened, and Janus regretted speaking the words, even if they were true.

“I’m well aware you don’t like caste-based systems,” Lira said, “and that I’m partially responsible for that, but it’s the system we have to deal with.”

Mick kicked Janus in the boot. “Also, don’t be a jerk, boss.”

“I know, I know!” Janus said, raising his hands in surrender. “What are our options?”

Lira’s eyes unfocused as she thought of the angles. “We can convince Koni to work with us, we can find another really high-ranked Verazlan, or we can kill her.”

“How does killing her solve our problem?” Janus asked.

Lira shrugged. “Her clan assigned her to us to pay a debt. If she couldn’t pay the debt, they’d have to send someone else.”

“You think that’d work?” Mick asked.

“No,” Janus said. “It’s not going to work because we’re not murderers. Also, one of the Verazlan rangers threatened to kill us if something happened to her.”

Mick rolled his eyes. “Sure, but if we had to…”

The three Irkallans looked at each other somberly, and then they burst out laughing.

“All right,” Mick said. “No killing Koni, although I’ve got to tell you, if it came down to her or our families back on Irkalla…”

“Yeah,” Janus said. “Let’s just hope we can find a suitable replacement in time.”

The flame dog picked that moment to let out a tremendous, fiery burp that lit up the clearing.

“Whoa!” Mick said.

They watched as the flame dog chased after a dozen mouse-sized bugs that hissed and bounded in every direction.

That was a problem because some of the bugs were heading straight for them, and those were the bugs the flame dog had decided to chase.

She opened her mouth, and Janus’s eyes widened at the burnt orange glow.

“Look out!” Lira said. She grabbed Janus by the waist and rolled them behind the log they’d been sitting on as Mick dove in the opposite direction.

Night turned to day as the flame dog let out a much more extended belch, bathing the bugs in fire.

Lira stared at Janus, wide-eyed behind the log, as the light went out. The air stank of sulfur and something else that coated Janus’s nostrils and mouth.

He heard contented munching from the other side of the log.

“What the hell was that?” Lira hissed. “Did she just attack us?”

“I don’t think so…” Janus said. “Wrong place, wrong time?”

“Fury,” Mick said. “We should call her Fury.”

Janus popped up from behind the log in time to see Mick lowering his gun. “I don’t think she was attacking us. She was just feeding.”

“She needs a name anyway,” Mick said. “Don’t you, girl?”

The specimen turned and puffed some smoke at him before returning her attention to her meal.

Janus sighed. “She’s not a pet, Mick.”

“How’d she get out, anyway?” Mick asked.

Janus suddenly looked a little guilty. “I might have let her out to forage.”

“Janus!” Lira said.

“You fed her jerky!”

Lira blushed. “I… definitely did that. Sorry.”

Janus shook his head. “It’s my fault. I’ll keep her in the carrier or on a harness.”

The flame dog looked up at them, tongue lolling to one side of her mouth, then she dove back into a cracked-open bug carcass with enthusiasm, mouth glowing a dull orange as she gorged. The little creature was wild and fierce, but she was doing a better job of joining the team than Koni was, and that deserved at least some recognition.

Janus laughed and shook his head. “She’s not a pet, but I guess she does deserve a name, and Fury is as good as any.”