Cofan, Twilight Valley
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.1.25 Interstellar
Janus and Mick pulled into the Cofan motor pool two hours and thirty-five minutes after Janus received the call. It was a good time, based on the distance, the weather, the roads, and the vehicles. The motor pool was located on the north side of the village, outside the thick stone and plaster wall that ringed the entire settlement.
The massive 60-meter radio antenna that made this the hub for dozens of smaller Motragi settlements in the region pointed at the gray sky, stars hidden by the glow of 15,000 humans living in perpetual twilight.
“Did that feel like it took too long?” Mick asked, walking over from his vehicle.
“Not really,” Janus said. “I mean, we could have pushed harder if we—”
“Hey! You’re late!” Lira said, jogging across the parking lot toward them.
Lira had had some of the rough spots knocked off of her in the past year, both by getting exiled and by finally getting closure about her mother’s death. Isolated from the trade routes and rules she’d grown up in, she’d made connections with the elders of several coldside enclaves and all three sun-side clans. She was known as a peacemaker, although the sun-siders weren’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Janus knew she was still a controlling, relentless, realpolitik diplomat trying to bring peace to her new home by any means, but she did it out of a desire to help rather than spite.
Most of the time, anyway. Lira’s ability to hold a grudge was impressive, even on Krandermore.
Lira had also spent her childhood training to live up to her aspirant mother’s legacy, so she had the compact body of a professional athlete. Blond hair and blue eyes—unusual for an Irkallan. She was shorter than Janus or Mick, but she loomed in conversations with the stature of a professional negotiator. “You were supposed to be here five minutes ago.”
Janus didn’t waste time getting defensive. “What’s the situation?”
“Too much to say, not enough time,” Lira answered. “I’ve got a side-by-side loaded with our gear. I’ll brief you on the way.”
“Hold on a minute,” Janus said. “I have a valuable specimen back there, and we’re just back from the field—”
“Cofan needs us,” Lira said. “I can get someone trustworthy to get your critter to the lab, but this is the top priority for the town elders.”
Janus felt his hackles start to rise, and Lira must have seen it because she paused. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s a crisis. I’ve been dealing with it for hours. I need you.”
Janus knew that in spite of her assertiveness, she was giving him a choice—a real one, not just her way or the highway. There was real trust between the three of them. They’d gone up against the worst their homeworld could throw at them together and survived. “Mick?” he asked.
“Always down for a good time, boss,” the Hunter answered, grabbing his pack.
“Okay,” Janus said. “Lead the way, Lira. Just make sure that specimen doesn’t get ‘lost.’ It’s valuable.”
Lira’s eyes glowed blue as she accessed her wrist comm, then she swiped her interface closed. “Done. Anything exciting?”
“Fire!” Mick said with a grin. “Fire is always exciting.”
***
Less than fifteen minutes later, their gear was checked and loaded, Janus’s specimen was safely locked away in the Cofan labs, and the three of them—Janus, Mick, and Lira—were bouncing down the road in a four-seat buggy known as a side-by-side with Lira at the wheel.
“What’s the brief?” Janus asked, now that they were on their way to whatever urgent job the town elders had assigned them.
Lira kept her eyes on the road as she spoke. “You remember that trade deal I was helping negotiate?”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Mick groaned. “I swear, Lira. If you pulled me from training because of some political—”
Janus punched him in the shoulder from the back seat. “Lira’s stuff is important.”
“And getting drunk in the woods isn’t,” Lira said.
Before Mick could protest, Janus punched her in the shoulder. “Mick’s stuff is important too, and so is mine, for that matter.”
“Yes, Mom,” Mick and Lira said, sounding like guilty kids, although Janus could see they were both smiling, happy to be together. The sniping and cat-fights from their first trip were over, and the Void was welcome to them. They were his team and his closest friends.
“So what happened with the deal?” Janus asked. “Did it fall through?”
“It blew up,” Lira said, then added, “Hold on.” She cranked the wheel and pulled the parking brake, skidding them around a wide turn in the dirt road before accelerating down the next stretch.
“Nice driving,” Mick commented. “Now, I know I’m not the diplomat of the group, but if your trade thing is on the rocks, shouldn’t you be back in Cofan getting them drunk or giving them the hard sell?”
Lira rolled her eyes. “That’s exactly what I should be doing, except the coldsiders weren’t content to walk away from the table. They stole it.”
“They stole the table?” Mick asked with a trollish grin.
Janus wasn’t amused. “Not now, Mick. This is serious. They stole the XC-108?”
Lira nodded, taking another turn at high speed. “Eight samples of it, enough to start an entire crop cycle.”
Janus felt his stomach drop, and it had nothing to do with the bump in the road making them go airborne for a full second before they slammed back down.
The XC-108 was a hyper-efficient wheat crop that could be grown in the low-light conditions of coldside, where famine was always an issue. Each canister could seed a 500-square-meter field.
Janus had worked on the delivery system, applying Irkallan knowledge to the development, while the Motragi developed the crossbreed.
There was nothing better on either planet that he knew of, short of using Prime Dome’s ultra-efficient soil enhancers. The licensing rights were meant to be a major part of the Motragi clan’s revenue for the following years. “This could mean war,” Janus said
“It would mean war if the Motragi rangers hunted the coldside traders down and butchered them in the jungle, which they would be honor-bound to do if the town elders had told them. But since we’re already on the case, it must have slipped the elders’ mind.”
Janus scowled. “They want us to take the blame, don’t they?”
“Pretty cynical, boss,” Mick said.
Lira shook her head. “They want us to bring the coldsiders and the samples back so they can pretend this never happened.”
“See?” Mick asked, twisting to look at Janus in the back seat.
Lira sighed. “But if we can’t do that, then yes, they’ll blame us.”
“Blame us for what?” Mick asked.
“If we hurt the thieves, they hand us over as a blood price, and if we lose the samples, they’ll punish us instead of the Carver Institute,” Janus said through gritted teeth.
“They feel awful about it, if it makes you feel better,” Lira said.
“It doesn’t,” Janus answered. He’d tried so hard to be useful, to not make waves in the Motragi power structure while the three of them carved a place for themselves.
Lira shrugged. “They can’t afford to fight eight coldside habitats at once.”
Mick didn’t agree. “They’d win. The other clans would fight alongside Motragi on this.”
“People would die on both sides,” Janus said. He didn’t bring up the fact that coldsiders used more modern, long-range weaponry and that the last sun-side raids on the coldside habitats had ended in disaster. “It doesn’t matter what the elders will or won’t do. We can’t control that. But this is our home, and we’re going to get the thieves and the samples back to Cofan unharmed, no matter what.”
“Wouldn’t hurt if they got a little banged up along the way,” Lira said.
Mick chuckled. “We’ll catch them, and banging up will happen, one way or another.”
Janus nodded. If they brought the thieves back unharmed, the people of Cofan would do worse to them than his team would. “But when this is finished,” Janus continued, “We’re going to start to aggressively build assets and leverage so the elders can’t do this to us again, and if we can’t do that, we leave. We’re a million kilometers past the point of getting jerked around like this.”
“Agreed,” Lira said, gripping the steering wheel and focusing on driving faster.
The good news was that the coldsiders had left on foot. All vehicles—even theirs—were kept under guard by the Cofan rangers. Even if they’d stashed a buggy or two in the bush, the elders had radioed ahead with non-specific instructions for the rangers to block the main roads to the northeast and east, before the river.
That left a number of jungle paths Mick knew like the back of his hand, and only some of them would lead to a neutral village where the thieves could get transportation.
The coldsiders had a several-hour head start, but that wouldn’t mean much if Lira could get ahead of them and Mick could pick up their trail.
***
A quarter of an hour later, Lira stopped at a trailhead. The mud sported fresh boot prints, only half filled with rain, although there was no sign of the coldsiders.
“Are we sure this is the path they took?”
“No,” Lira said. “Mick?”
Mick crossed his arms, looking at the map display embedded in the dash. “Those aren’t Motragi prints. It’s the way I’d go. If they can get to one of the larger rivers, they can catch a fast boat to another settlement and get ground transportation from there.”
“Where do we stop them?” Lira asked.
Mick took a minute to look at the map and do the math. “Take the next left, then head down the road about ten kilometers. We’ll either come out ahead of them or cross their trail.”