Midnight Hollow, Team Invarian Staging Tent

Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge

4453.2.12 Interstellar

Janus was physically shaking when they made it back to the staging tent. It had been too much. He’d seen people injured or die in accidents. He’d lost companions during the last Trials. He’d seen holo-vids of his dome being exterminated by Cult enforcers, but this had been too real, too close. He’d watched a man be brutally beaten to death by his own grandfather, and the image burned into his memory was more vivid than real, like some deranged animal attack. It made him feel like everyone they came across as they made their way back could be a creature like Brago, a vicious monster peering out from within their eye sockets.

Mick had gone back right away. They’d left Fury and the rest of their gear under the care of Trial officials, but that protection was all but voided if they weren’t able to participate.

Lira had rushed off to find a different sponsor, one who wasn’t directly related to Brago Tlali-Acamatl, but there was no consensus among the Verazlan about how far Brago’s authority might reach. His son had married into the Atl-Verazlan family, and Brago’s own family had strong connections to the lesser nobility and the yeoman class. He’d been presumed dead, and Verazlan law broadly assumed a life expectancy of fifty years. There was no precedent to rely on.

That left Janus to deal with the body. He hadn’t known who to contact. The young man had come to Midnight Hollow on his own, possibly against his mother’s wishes, so Janus had to arrange for Copecki’s remains to be sent back to Veraz.

Ryler had helped, using his rank within the Cult to force open doors that would have been barred to Janus. The sun-siders resented him, and the coldsiders would have quickly discovered he didn’t belong to one of their corporations. In the end, they’d overpaid a Pugarian merchant to ship Copecki’s remains.

By the time he and Ryler made it back to the staging tent, they were soaked, and more than two hours had passed. Registration was over. They’d forfeited their chance to take part in the Trials.

“What do we do?” Lira asked Janus with an edge of desperation.

It was rare to see her like this. Lira didn’t get shaken by much, but she’d been raised by demanding parents and under the burden of her mother’s legacy. She was worried about her father the same way Janus, Mick, and Ryler had reason to worry about their loved ones, but at a deeper level, Janus knew Lira would do almost anything to avoid failure, even team up with a man she’d thought of as her worst enemy. He smiled at her, although he couldn’t keep the pain of Copecki’s brutal killing from his eyes, and asked, “What can we do? There must be a way.”

Lira bit the side of her thumb. “We could try to bribe or threaten the officials. Could get us disqualified, but that has to be better than just letting this happen.”

“Do we win if we take the other team out?” Mick asked.

“No,” Ryler said. “We have to prove a team can win the Trials in two different environments. That will allow Nikandros to preserve Irkalla, at least until the root cause of Irkalla’s exceptionalism can be found.”

Janus didn’t like the sound of that. “How long would that buy us, exactly?”

“We could stretch it out at least two generations,” Ryler said.

“Okay,” Janus said, surprised at Ryler’s notion of time and relieved. “What else?”

Fury hissed and growled in her carrier, pawing at the door, and Janus smiled. “It’s nice to see we’re all participating, but I don’t think burning them will solve our problems either.”

It wasn’t a great joke, but it cut through a small bit of the tension.

“I’ll get her some grubs,” Mick said, digging through one of the coolers.

“I can reach out to the Pugarian teams,” Lira said. “We can run under fake identities and have the Pugarians tidy up the paperwork afterward.”

“Won’t that get us disqualified?” Janus asked.

Lira shrugged, standing up. “This will not be the first time the Pugarians change the composition of their teams after registration. They’ve routinely used aspirants who were wanted criminals in other territories.”

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“What about their current aspirants?” Ryler asked.

“I might need Mick’s help for that,” Lira answered.

“Got you, mate,” Mick said, opening Fury’s carrier and giving her a bowl full of wriggling finger-thick grubs.

Janus nodded. “Thanks, Lira. I knew I could count on you. I can’t believe they did that to Copecki. What kind of monster—”

The flap to the staging tent opened, and Koni came in out of the rain.

The Irkallans stared at her.

“What are you all doing?” she demanded. “The Trials start in less than four hours. We need to load the vehicles and get to the starting point.”

Janus frowned at her. “Koni, we need to tell you something. Copecki—”

“Shut up,” Koni said. “Just… No. I don’t want to hear it. I was there.”

Then Janus saw it. It looked like the same old Koni, but there was an unstable layer beneath the assertiveness. Had it always been there?

“Then you know we can’t run,” Lira said, touching the Verazlan’s elbow. “I have a plan.”

“We can run,” Koni said firmly. “And we will run under the banner of Veraz. While all of you were moping, I registered the team under my name, so if you’re done crying for someone you only met today, we have a race to win.”

She shrugged off Lira’s hand and moved to organize her things.

Janus, Ryler, Mick, and Lira looked at each other.

“You heard the woman,” Janus said.

“You got it, boss,” Mick said, and he and Lira started grabbing boxes to haul them outside.

“Koni?” Janus said.

“What?”

“Thank you. You don’t know how much it means to us.”

Koni’s face twisted into a snarl. “Save your thanks. Brago will come for us during the Trials, and when he does, I want him dead.”

“I can get behind that plan,” Mick said.

“So can I,” Lira added.

Ryler crossed his arms. “They may not wait for the race to start. They know our start point, and the route from there to our first checkpoint is the most predictable part of our journey.”

“I know,” Janus said. “It’s time to spend some credits and call in some favors.”

***

Janus clasped the old ranger’s arm. “Thank you.”

The ranger shook his head. “I should be thanking you. We knew that Pugarian team was dangerous, but you’ve proved it. This will save lives.”

The rain was coming down hard, even for Krandermore. From what Janus understood, a monsoon start was considered lucky, as if the planet was exhausting her fury before the contest could begin. The other teams would be sitting at the starting points, feeling confident, maybe checking their maps. There was still time, but not long.

Ten meters from where the buggies were parked, a race official watched to make sure they didn’t leave early. It gave him some comfort the compartmentalist team would be where they should be, at least two kilometers north.

Janus looked at the old ranger. It was hard to make out his face because they were both wearing waterproof ponchos with the hood up against the rain. “Tell me something.”

“What?”

“With a comm network like you’ve set up and people spread out across the region and in the settlements, the Motragi don’t have to play second string to the Verazlan. You could take control.”

The veteran scoffed. “Then what?”

Janus wiped his hands on his pants under his poncho. “I don’t know. I like your people. I was happy in Cofan. But I’ve got a dead team member on my hands before the Trials even started, and I’m starting to feel like learning and knowing aren’t enough.”

The old ranger grunted and adjusted his hood. He pulled a flask from under his poncho and offered it to Janus.

“I’m driving,” Janus said.

“Suit yourself,” the ranger said, taking a pull before putting it away. “I can’t speak to your problems, Janus, but there’s a reason we invite the other clans to join our research teams. Part of it is the same reason you were invited, so we could learn from you and watch you. But you’re right. We could take control. Our teams could assassinate eighty percent of the clan and family leaders in a matter of days. We have a plan for it. It will never happen.”

“Why not?” Janus asked. “Don’t you think things would be better under the Motragi?”

“I don’t know,” the ranger said. “We’d have to be in charge to find out, Janus. Maybe that would be a good thing. We could run things through the committees, connect the settlements, set up a better distribution network, and keep track of the worst of the Pugarian profiteers or Verazlan raiders. Or maybe it would change us, and a generation or two from now, when we’d forgotten how things were, we’d make them worse than they are.”

“So you do nothing?” Janus asked. “What if this already is the worst it gets?”

The ranger shrugged. “I told you, Janus. We have a plan for that, and power has its uses. I’m just asking you to consider if it’s worth becoming what you hate to get it.”

Janus thought about that. He’d come to Krandermore, and he’d survived by learning. Mick had adapted to the jungle. Lira had tried to build a network of friendships and favors, but it didn’t always work. How much had they all changed? Was his discomfort around Ryler because something was wrong with his old friend, or was it just that the year they’d spent apart had made the changes he’d gone through evident to Janus—the same changes that Janus had probably gone through without noticing.

When he thought about who he was a year ago, before the Trials, he didn’t recognize himself. He’d felt so much resentment toward his dome, his parents, the Primers, and his uncle. Never Callie, his younger sister. She’d always been the bright spot in his life, but he’d hated himself for being unable to do more for her. And he’d lived in fear. At any moment, one of the Primers or, worse, a Hub-born aristocrat could come down from their heights to take the little he’d scraped together away.

He didn’t feel that way anymore. He was proud of his dome and his parents. He understood the Primers, and he pitied them. He hoped things had gotten better. And he felt confident in his abilities. Copecki’s death had challenged that belief, but it shouldn’t have.

He needed to find a balance between respecting the threats surrounding him and respecting himself.

“Thank you. I’ll give it the consideration it merits.”

The ranger grunted. “Knock ’em dead, Janus.”

Janus grinned under his hood. Copecki’s death had been horrible and unnecessary, but they had a team and a plan, and even a Cult hit squad from the past wouldn’t be enough to stop them.