Midnight Hollow, Start Point D

Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge

4453.2.12 Interstellar

As soon as Janus got into the buggy, Koni said, “The route you chose to the first waypoint is stupid.”

Janus only paused for a heartbeat. He sat down, pulled the door shut, and started strapping himself in.

“Did you hear me?” Koni asked.

Fury growled from her crate in the back seat.

Janus sighed, let his hands fall into his lap, and turned to his new teammate. “It’s called the teaming cycle.”

“What?” Koni said, taken about.

“Some people call it the team development process,” Janus said. “New people get together, they fight over who does what, whatever happens during that time becomes routine, and only then do they start getting good at what they do.”

“I’m already good at what I do, and I don’t need to fight over who does what,” Koni said, crossing her arms.

“You still think you should be leading the team?” Janus said.

“Of course I should!” Koni said. Janus clenched his jaw and was about to escalate the situation beyond any point of usefulness when Koni added, “But the others have made it clear they will not accept what should be obvious, and I do not have time to argue with mad people.”

“I agree,” Janus said cautiously.

“The route you chose is stupid. Everybody knows it. Even Copecki.”

“Are you seriously talking your dead cousin down after he—”

“I know what he did,” Koni said. “I know what he was trying to do. I’m not an idiot. And I don’t owe him my undying worship, no matter how misguided his attempt to rescue me was. Copecki was a Verazlan ranger for a few years. He knew the jungle around Veraz, the hot zones, and some of the routes to the nearest coldside settlements. I studied rivers and trade routes. The route you chose is going to get us killed.”

The two of them stared at each other in the dim, green light of the cab. Janus didn’t want to listen to her. He was almost sure she’d take every centimeter he gave her as a license to take his whole arm, but he’d also been through this before with Lira. There were no other options. They were stuck in this.

At some point, he was going to have to trust this woman, and the sooner he did, the sooner they’d start operating as a team.

“Okay,” Janus said. “Let’s start over. I’m going to pretend you haven’t been a gigantic pain in my exhaust for the past three weeks, and you’re going to pretend I have something to offer.”

“You do what you want, coldsider,” Koni said, uncrossing her arms. “Now, pull up the map.”

Janus chuckled and shook his head. At least she wasn’t denying he was in charge. Good enough. He linked his wrist comm to the center console and pulled up a holographic map, courtesy of the data he’d gotten from the Motragi ranger. The route Janus and Mick had chosen glowed bright green.

“This is a good map,” Koni said, surprised.

Janus grunted and let her orient herself.

“We’re not where we’re supposed to be,” she said.

“Lira got us to swap starting points with a Pugarian team,” Janus said.

“They’ll tell Brago.”

“She’s counting on it,” Janus said. “She got a coldside team to swap with us after we swapped with the Pugarians. The compartmentalists can find us, but it will take them longer.”

Koni nodded. She linked her own wrist comm to the display and, a moment later, a second route appeared parallel to the first in bright blue.

“It’s longer,” Janus said. “About ten percent.”

“Rougher terrain, as well,” Koni agreed.

“Hold on,” Janus said. He brought up the team channel, connecting him, Koni, Lira, Mick, and Ryler. “Hey, people. I’ve got a new route.”

“What? Why?” Lira asked.

Janus sat back and waited. Ryler would only comment if he had new information to share. Mick, he knew, was quick with his jokes and his fists but more measured in everything else.

“I can see the merits, mate,” the Hunter said. “They’ll never expect us to go down that path. Thing is, there’s a reason they wouldn’t expect it.”

“Can we make it?” Janus asked.

“I wouldn’t let Lira drive it,” Mick said.

“Excuse me?” Lira said.

“Remember that time you sheared off your front tire?” Mick said.

Janus rolled his eyes and muted the channel.

“You didn’t tell them it was my idea,” Koni remarked.

Janus laughed. “I wanted them to judge the choice on its merits, not yours.” He turned the channel back on.

“Who drove us out of Prometheus Base?” Lira said.

Janus hit the interrupt twice and said, “Mick, let Lira drive.”

“You got it, boss,” Mick said.

“I’m glad you agree. This is Koni’s idea, by the way.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“What?” Lira said.

Janus grinned and muted the channel again.

“You have an interesting way of leading your team,” Koni said.

“That’s because they’re also my friends,” Janus said. “In a minute, when Lira’s calmed down, we’ll talk about any adjustments that need to be made.”

“Good,” Koni said with a hint of a smirk. “You can tell them we couldn’t take the old route anyway. I have one of the other Verazlan teams taking it as decoys.”

***

The buggy slammed down, jarring Janus’s teeth and making the flame dog yelp. Roots jutted out from the ground like gnarled fingers, and patches of thick mud made them skid when they were going fast and threatened to mire them when they went slow. Janus drove with total focus, not wasting a thought on regret as he struggled to keep their buggy on the road while Lira unleashed a stream of curses from the rear vehicle.

“This is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” Koni admitted. “Had I known, I would have chosen differently.”

Janus grunted. “We’ll get through it. It doesn’t help to second guess.”

“I was wrong,” Koni insisted. “You are allowed to be angry, Janus. I would be.”

“I’m not pleased,” Janus said as a bump nearly slammed his helmet into the steering wheel. “But I also don’t blame you. Krandemore changes.”

“It does,” Koni said, bracing herself on the dashboard.

The truth was, Janus had known this route would be hard, but he’d wanted to give Koni a chance to really contribute to the team. He didn’t regret that, not exactly, but with how slow their progress was, they were going to have to spend several days catching up to the teams who took easier routes.

Janus gritted his teeth and kept driving, but after another hour of the punishing terrain, both his readouts from the vehicles and the team told him it was time for a break. “We’ll pull over on the next straightaway.”

“Thank the Survivor,” Lira said.

Janus found a somewhat dry and level spot and pulled the buggy onto it. “Hold on, let me check for hazards,” he said, popping his straps.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Koni said, getting out of the buggy.

Janus sighed and opened his door.

They were in a particularly gloomy stretch of jungle. The twisted trees had long, drooping branches and roots that jutted out of the muddy ground like they were trying to migrate. Janus’s suit readouts showed amber-red-green, which meant there were potentially hazardous animals lurking in the dark and that a disease vector was present, but that the temperature and humidity were actually quite pleasant. Janus opened the interface to investigate the red light, and it turned out his suit microphones were picking up the whine of a blood-drinking insect known to carry Nahualli’s Syndrome.

“All right, everyone. Coast is clear,” Janus said. “Bug juice before you go wandering. Koni, you too.” Janus tossed her a small aerosol can.

She caught it but looked skeptical. “I’m not as fragile as you coldsiders.”

“You want dream fever?” Janus asked.

The Verazlan hesitated, then sprayed herself with the insect repellant.

Didn’t think so, Janus said. He sprayed his suit, then removed his helmet.

The rich smell of mulch and rot filled his nostrils. While all rainforest was naturally resilient, this part of it was dying. The trees were packed in too tightly, the undergrowth too dense, and something about the terrain was directing more rain here than the soil could handle. In a hundred years, this whole area might be a swamp. In a couple thousand years, unless things changed, it would become a peat bog.

“This route is slag,” Lira said loudly around a mouthful of protein bar.

Janus huffed. Lira had come a long way since their days on Irkalla, but she could still peel the paint off a buggy when she was pissed.

“Did you do it on purpose?” she asked Koni. “Is this some sick kind of revenge for me punching you and putting the trade treaty back on the table?”

“Lira, that’s enough,” Janus said, walking around the buggy to join them.

“I want to know,” Lira said. “I want to know if she’s been working with the compartmentalists all along. Maybe she wanted Copecki dead. She treated him like crap when he first showed up.”

“You should listen to her, Janus,” Koni said, stone-faced. “This is how you reprimand a subordinate who failed.”

“You’re not a subordinate,” Janus said. “We’re a team.”

“Yes, boss,” Lira said, imitating Mick.

Janus thought he might have seen the momentary hint of a smile break on Koni’s face.

“Speaking of Mick, where is he?” Janus asked, pulling a canteen of water from his hip.

Lira turned her head right and up, and Janus followed her gaze. Mick was halfway up a fifteen-meter-tall tree with a cable clipped to his belt. Ryler was at the base of the tree, unspooling the cable and keeping it clear of branches.

“What are you doing?” Janus yelled.

“Checking in with Nikandros!” Ryler yelled back.

Janus groaned.

“You think Daddy’s going to be looking over our shoulder the whole trip?” Lira asked.

“Please don’t call him that,” Janus said.

Fury yipped from the backseat of the buggy, and her cage rocked against the restraints.

“I’m going to walk our little monster,” Janus said.

“I’ll make lunch for us,” Lira said, and Janus nodded.

He opened the back door of the buggy and got Fury out of the cage.

After the drive they had, Janus figured it was best to give each of the team members some extra time alone. Lira’s mom taught her how to cook meals in the dust between the domes of Irkalla, and he knew that her announcement was both a way of reconnecting with those memories and an apology for being disruptive. He tried to keep an eye on Koni, but she wandered off a short ways and disappeared into the foliage, the same way Mick could. Mick had almost reached the treetop, and Janus knew he would linger there until called back because Hunters almost but didn’t quite worship the stars, and Ryler’s face had gone blank as he interfaced with the communication device he’d brought out from his gear.

Fury pulled at the harness, and Janus let himself be led into the brush.

The little flame dog bounded forward once she sensed Janus was following. She would scamper forward to a tree, a stone, or a patch of mud no different from any other, and then she would sniff or paw at the ground before moving to the next spot.

There was no discernible pattern to it that Janus could tell. Maybe she just enjoyed it. The simplemindedness of it was a balm for the fatigue of driving on the awful road, mind focused for four exhausting hours, and all of it to fall inexorably behind the other contestants.

Because it was his fault. It was always his fault. That’s what it meant to lead the team.

Fury’s scratching woke a dormant horned viper. The snakes were usually aggressive toward humans, but this one took one look at the flame dog and started slithering away.

Fury chased after it and batted at it with her paw, causing the horned viper to coil up and hiss, but Fury stared it down, and it started to flee again.

It was fascinating. He’d captured Fury hundreds of kilometers from here, and there were no records or indications that her species was widespread or present in this part of the Twilight Valley, and yet something about her scared the Void out of something that wasn’t scared of anyone.

Fury waited until Janus got closer, bunching the leash, and then she pounced, rising almost a meter into the air before landing on the fleeing viper and chomping down on its neck.

He smiled and shook his head as the little monster lay down and started enjoying her meal.

Janus let her eat. She’d hunted dangerous game and earned the reward.

They’d actually wandered farther from the vehicles than he’d realized. He pulled up his wrist comm. While there was no noosphere here, and the foliage dampened signals at an inconvenient rate, the implant had a limited capacity for dead reckoning that mapped out his surroundings.

Fury stiffened and hissed, and Janus’s mouth dropped open as a boulder half the size of a side-by-side lifted itself out of the muck.

It was a rock crab, awakened by the smell of blood. A mud-covered claw as big as a tree trunk unfurled from under its shell.

Janus started slowly backing away.

The leash went taut.

“Fury, come on,” Janus whispered urgently.

The flame dog planted her feet, hackles raised. She was surprisingly hard to pull.

“Fury!” Janus said.

Rock crabs were scavengers, slow to wake but almost unstoppable once they got moving. Janus had toxins back in his pack that would kill one, but he didn’t dare lead it back. This one was big enough to damage the vehicles.

He was about to drop the leash—his specimen wasn’t as important as the Trials or his team—when Fury opened her jaw wide and shrieked, two frills like webbed hands unfurling from her neck, rib cage vibrating as Janus staggered from the high-pitched blast of sound. It was like an air horn or maybe a jet exhaust.

The rock crab bellowed in alarm, which was more of a hooting honk, and it raised its claw defensively.

And it backed down.

“Well, I’ll be shoved out an airlock…” Janus said.

The rock crab turned and lumbered away

“Good girl,” Janus said.

Fury cocked her head, her eyes almost intelligent, then she went back to eating the snake, little flickers of fire curling from her mouth.