Riverboat Fudo-Maru, Iztacatl River
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.2.20 Interstellar
Janus scrambled to his feet, slipping in fish guts, slime, and blood.
Fury nuzzled his hand, and he said, “Good girl, Fury. You did great.”
The jungle dragon looked up at him with loving, orange eyes and belched a little puff of smoke.
The tentacarth was dead. Some of the crewmembers, stunned and similarly coated in gore, let out a weak cheer.
“Save the celebration for later!” Captain Tanaka snapped. “We’ve got a crew-woman overboard!”
The captain’s words, curses, and orders quickly brought order to the deck of the ship as searchlights were switched on and the missing sailor’s wrist comm was pinged.
“There!” Mick said, pointing at a small shape in the water.
It was their missing sailor. She was concussed, and she had several broken ribs, but she was alive. “I need a clean space to treat her,” Janus said, looking at the mess the tentacarth’s explosion had made of the deck and their buggies.
“Take her aft,” Ryler said, pointing toward the rear of the ship. “Mick and Lira can help.”
“You’re not coming?” Janus said, surprised.
The cultist shook his head. “I want to look at what’s left of our river monster. You ever seen one of those go after a riverboat?”
“Never,” Koni said. “They usually hunt in muddy inlets and bogs, and you have to dig them out.”
“I’ll leave you to it,” Janus said.
He, Mick, and Lira carried the injured sailor to the less affected rear of the ship, and Janus treated her under the glow of two ship lanterns.
It was touch and go for a while. On top of the concussion, general bruising, and broken ribs, the sailor had fluid in her chest cavity. Janus had to insert a large-gauge needle to get the liquid out so she could breathe, but all a passing crewmate saw was Janus jamming something into her side and then a stream of blood and bile. The sailor threw himself on Janus, and Fury threw herself at him. Captain Tanaka hollered at them to knock it off, and it was lucky Janus was able to keep his patient from getting hurt. Once she was stable, he supervised getting her placed below, out of the rain. Mick and Lira saw to checking and cleaning the buggies, the captain barked out orders, and the crew got the ship put back together.
The sailor who’d been nearly bitten in half was wrapped in a tarp and brought down into the cargo hold.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Captain,” Janus said.
Tanaka shook her head. “Craziest thing I’ve ever seen. Shouldn’t even have been on this part of the river.”
Janus nodded. There were some interesting medical applications of tentacarth nerve bundles in restoring paralyzed humans to full function, and he’d read some of the Motragi research expedition reports. They were migratory predators, but that was mostly for the purposes of mating, and they tended to settle in muddy inlets where their many tentacles could comb through the muck for shells, crabs, frogs, fish, and even large reptiles.
They didn’t mess with groups of humans.
They didn’t go after boats as big as the Fudo-Maru.
After their encounter with the drug-mad emberthorn, Janus’s first thought was some sort of illness or a contaminant in the water, but then why hadn’t other animals been affected, and why had the tentacarth specifically targeted them? He thought back to the first moments of the fight when the river monster had shot past them and then doubled back. Had it been the ship alarms that triggered it? Or Fury’s challenge?
Ryler caught his eye. He was carrying a small bundle—a piece of oilcloth wrapped around an object the size of a brick. He nodded toward the cargo hatch.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Everybody meet below,” Janus said over the team channel.
From the look on Ryler’s face, Janus guessed they were going to get some answers.
***
The team gathered around a low table in the cargo hold, and the crew gave them enough space to talk. Mick, Lira, and Koni were uninjured and in relatively good spirits. Fury, if anything, looked happier than usual. The little jungle dragon seemed to enjoy a good fight and was positively wiggly with excitement at having been allowed down into the cargo hold.
“How were the fires?” Janus asked Mick.
The Hunter shrugged. “Had to shovel some of the burning pieces of tentacarth overboard and might have scuffed up the captain’s deck a bit, but I don’t think anyone’s going to hold a grudge. Hotdog did a good job.”
“Hotdog?” Janus said, mortified at this new affront to his jungle dragon’s dignity.
Mick and Lira grinned.
“You’re all very strange,” Koni said, but she too seemed relaxed.
Janus wondered if it was that, like Fury, Koni had found her place within the team. “We do have a tendency to adopt fire-breathing strays.”
Lira laughed, and Koni scowled and kicked him in the shin.
“What did you find, Ryler?” Janus asked, crossing his arms.
The cultist took a quick look to make sure the Fudo’s crew members weren’t around. Then, he put the bundle on the table with a heavy metallic thunk. He unwrapped it, revealing a brick-sized steel box wrapped in what looked like hair-thin wires. Each wire was knotted and hooked every ten centimeters or so.
“What in the Void is that?” Janus said, leaning forward.
“It’s a neural goad,” Ryler said. “It’s used for the rapid taming of animals. It can be programmed with a range of simple behaviors.”
Janus looked at the wires and hooks with something between unease and disgust. “It looks like a torture device.”
“It wasn’t meant to be,” Ryler said. “The early colonization of Krandermore required a certain level of expedience. We don’t use them anymore. The animals obey, but it drives them crazy.”
Janus wanted to ask if the Cult had used them on humans in the name of expedience, but he was afraid of the answer.
“And that was tangled around the tentacarth?” Mick said, pointing.
“No,” Ryler said. “It was surgically implanted. The goad was programmed to drive the tentacarth toward us using our data cube as a beacon and then make it go berserk.”
“So this wasn’t random,” Janus said. “It was an attack. A sophisticated one.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Ryler said with a predatory grin. “It would have been sophisticated if the goad had wiped itself when the creature died, but someone got sloppy. They didn’t realize that the tentacarth’s redundant nervous system would make it hard to distinguish between death and injury, and I was able to download the data. I can prove the compartmentalists cheated.”
“How does that help us, exactly?” Janus asked. “We could have died.”
“That’s probably better,” Lira said thoughtfully.
Ryler nodded. “I’ll send the evidence to Nikandros, but if we can prove the compartmentalists not only cheated, but they did so directly instead of through their team, and that they intended to subvert the rules of the arbitration, they’ll have to restore the balance.”
“And they’ve already wasted their shot,” Janus said, understanding how badly the comps had just screwed up. He laughed.
“What?” Ryler asked.
“I think this is the first time I’ve been glad to have Nikandros on our side. He’s going to squeeze them for everything they’re worth.”
***
Keret-Makarim
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.2.20 Interstellar
Brago and the other Krandermore-born aspirants watched as the team wayfinder, Tiersen, got his hide ripped off for something he didn’t do.
“This is unacceptable, Tiersen!” Donnika said. “You’ve compromised the integrity of the arbitration! I have half a mind to extract you.”
Brago grunted. She’d do no such thing.
“I apologize, Architect,” Tiersen said, bowing his head, and servos in his back whined from the motion. “I should have allowed our aspirant team to deal with the Irkallans.”
Nikandros cleared his throat. “I’m still a little unclear as to how you managed to control the creature from several hundred kilometers away.”
“I didn’t,” Tiersen said, skillfully blending lies and truths. “I put all of this in place before the Trials even started. I set the trap, and their data cube triggered it. I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d wanted to.”
Brago didn’t care about the Cult’s internal squabbles. He’d done what he’d had to in order to advance his family’s position within the Verazlan hierarchy. He’d sacrificed watching his daughter grow up for it. He’d sacrificed his grandson. He was starting to hate the Cult for robbing him of all those years only to take back what they’d promised.
But in that moment, if only in that moment, Brago could almost respect Tiersen, with his pretentious airs and his unnecessarily visible augmentations.
“I find your lack of faith disturbing, Tiersen,” Donnika said. “We’ll discuss repercussions when the Trials are over. In the meantime, Brago Tlali-Acamatl will assume full control of the team. You will do nothing without his instructions. Are we clear?”
“Yes, Architect.”
The transmission cut off.
Tiersen turned to face them. “This changes nothing.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Brago said, grabbing another assault rifle from the crate and checking over.
They had dozens of rifles in boxes and just as many pistols, submachine guns, and a smaller assortment of heavier gear.
It was unfortunate that Donnika had decided to solve the problem herself, but the inner workings of Tiersen’s faction weren’t Brago’s concern. He needed the nightmares to stop. He needed to go back on ice, come back in twenty years of real-time so he could see that it had all worked out and his family was better off because of what he’d done.
He needed to kill Invarian before the guilt made him weak.
If he became weak, the Cult would have no more use for him, and all that he had done, not just on this world but on several others, would have been for nothing.