Lost Valyr: Project Enterprise 7 Page 3

  His lips moved. Formed the single word. He frowned. The sound echoed in his head. He tried again.

  “Help.”

  When Rachel and Sir Rupert emerged into the sunshine on the other side of the outpost, the clock in this square was chiming the Garradian hour—or whatever they’d called a unit of time. Before she’d arrived on site, someone had tried to align it with Expedition time but gave up because it had thirteen symbols instead of twelve. Would not do to have the outpost time out of synch with ship time.

  Rachel had dug into Garradian time soon after arriving at the outpost, as a way of dealing with all the alien around her. But it only increased her sense of being out of synch. The numbers didn’t match with either the sun’s or the moon’s movement. Her theory was that planetary shift had caused the dissonance. Though no one had achieved precision on how long the Garradians had been gone, the almost consensus was that it had been a seriously long ago. In long time spans, shift happened.

  She glanced at her watch. They seemed to be a bit ahead of everyone else today. It was nice to be alone while they assessed the secondary transport access. When she first arrived, she’d been ordered to report each new find, but with Sir Rupert’s help, she’d found a lot of new, so her immediate boss told her to let him know about the “significant” stuff. She’d dealt with this revision by sending him a summary email every couple of weeks. She was pretty sure he didn’t read them, so she didn’t put a lot of time into them.

  With Sir Rupert still riding her shoulder, they crossed to the entry point for the medical complex. This morning the security guy had brought some crackers for Sir Rupert. Without comment, the parrot snagged them with a claw and politely nibbled at the edge of one because he’d just had breakfast and wasn’t hungry, she guessed.

  “My nephew’s parrot says thank you,” the guard said, looking vaguely disappointed.

  “Thank you,” Sir Rupert said, his squawk a bit more pronounced. Rachel thought he might have overdone it, but the guard looked pleased.

  “You’re welcome.” He stepped back, gesturing for them to enter.

  The automatic door slid back, revealing a small foyer. Behind this was a reception area that looked like about every doctor’s office she’d ever been in. Apparently, there was only so much you could do with a doctor’s office. Thanks to them, it even smelled like one.

  The waiting room was, in her opinion, a metaphor for doctor’s offices everywhere. The benches didn’t try to be comfortable, the badly faded art was sad, the check-in desk imposing, and the few pots scattered around were empty.

  Rachel, a relative newcomer to the outpost, had noted that the Expedition lived lightly here, rather than settling in and possessing it, so the only thing they’d changed here was by adding the smell of antiseptic.

  No one sat at the stern desk yet. Clinic didn’t start for a couple of hours. Serious injuries were transported up to one of the orbiting expedition ships anyway. The clinic, when it was open, dealt with minor stuff like following up on Briggs’ injuries and removing alien splinters. Sometimes all that was needed was a listening ear. The most pervasive “illness” was homesickness.

  She passed through the treatment area with Sir Rupert still riding along, weaving her way through the Garradian version of cubicles until they reached the office that apparently wasn’t an office. She realized, looking around now, that it did kind of look like a security station. The desk was higher than the others and blocked access to what she’d thought was a storage closet. She skirted the counter and stopped when it became clear the door wasn’t going to pop open for them. That was interesting. A palm plate and a keypad were on the side.

  Rachel pulled out her tablet and a cord she’d adapted to help her connect. She had a small screwdriver in one of the many pockets of her expedition issue jacket. With this, she pried the cover off. She unplugged one of their wires and plugged in hers. Thanks to those who had been here before her, she’d had time on the trip out to work on her hacking program. It had needed tweaking, but she was getting faster at cracking these code locked hatches.

  It took a little longer than she’d expected before the hatch slid back with a hiss and a burst of old, stale air.

  “I should have brought air freshener with me,” she muttered.

  If the smell bothered the parrot, he didn’t say so.

  When the air outside and in had equalized a bit, Rachel stepped inside.

  “This is definitely a transport module.” It was about the size of an elevator, a trait shared by most of the modules she’d used. Like elevators, they went up and down. And sideways. And sometimes it felt like they moved at angles. Someone else was researching the modules, but so far, they hadn’t cracked the secret of how they moved around. The only thing everyone agreed on was that the modules must have stabilizers and dampeners of some kind because they were fast.

  The hatch slid closed, and the interior lit up, as did a transport pad. A pad unlike any she’d seen so far.

  “Well, that’s…interesting.”

  It was a rectangle in overall shape, but on this one, the buttons were also various shapes. Two right triangles, a medium triangle, a square, a parallelogram, and two small triangles. Something about it made her brain twitch.

  “I’ve seen this before,” she murmured.

  “It is a tangram,” Sir Rupert said.

  “Of course. I got a set as a birthday gift when I was three or four. Kept me busy for a couple of hours.” She’d formed shapes to match the sheet that had accompanied the pieces. When she’d done all the variations, she’d tossed them aside. That had been a tough year for her parents until a neighbor had put them in touch with a support group for parents with annoyingly bright children. She gave a frustrated twitch of her shoulders. She tried not to think about the past. In addition to deflection, she was also good at denial. This most unusual panel was a good distraction.

  She traced the outer edges. No place for her screwdriver to get purchase. As she tried to find an edge, one of the pieces moved, shifting all of them. She took a half step back.

  “They move.” Movement did not seem like a good omen. It might have only taken her a couple of hours all those years ago, but back then, she’d had patterns to follow.

  “Yes, they do.” Sir Rupert’s wings moved gently, the touch of his feathers on her neck vaguely comforting.

  She wanted to ask how he knew this because it was obvious that door had not opened for a long time. She put a finger on one of the shapes and pushed until it moved up. All the shapes shifted again. A moving lock with thousands of variations. Crap. “I’m going to guess that only a very specific pattern unlocks this module.”

  Sir Rupert tipped his head to the side, his gaze intent on the tangram. “You are moving that piece the wrong direction.”

  This time she had to look at him. He bobbed his head as if urging her to try it. So she did. She moved the piece as directed. “This way?”

  “A little more to the right.” His wings began to flutter faster, moving the air as she moved the triangle. “Slower, move it up—stop!”

  She yanked her hand off the tangram and studied it. A half a name for it floated up. Dice something? Cup?

  “That’s a Dice cup, baby.” Her mother’s voice, patient but with an undercurrent of frustration. No wonder—

  Rachel uncurled her fingers and flexed them. “Now what?” The tension in her voice bothered her, and she took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. If Sir Rupert noticed—which he must have—he didn’t comment on it. She looked at him in what she hoped was polite inquiry.

  “I must explain—” he stopped.

  It was the first time, Rachel had ever thought he might not be majestically calm.

  “If this works, it will become apparent to you that I know things not possible for me to know.”

  Rachel tried to think of a comment. Couldn’t. So she nodded like she understood even though she didn’t.

  “My species has an unusual skill, one that caused us to be
hunted to near extinction.”

  “Near extinction?”

  “As far as I know, I am the last of my kind.”

  “I’m…so sorry.” It seemed massively inadequate. No, it was. She stiffened. “You’re hoping for a lead—” She researched cryogenics and he’d attached himself to her. She needed to think about that, but not right now.

  “Yes. The Garradians were scientists, researchers. Anything and everything interested them.”

  There was another long pause as if he was ordering his thoughts. Or editing them. And she still didn’t understand exactly what he was confessing. The special skill?

  As if he followed her thought process, he broke the silence. “My species can see echoes, ghosts if you will, of living species. We see layers of time, dimensions. When the skill is honed, we can sort through the images and piece them together in their own time and space.”

  A bunch of questions wanted to crowd out her mouth, so she kept it closed and just nodded as she tried to process this.

  “So…you can see, say people—” Garradians? “—who used this module? You can see them working that?” She nodded at the tangram.

  “That is a simplified version of what I see.” He ruffled his feathers. “For me, this module is very full. The patterns overlaid with each other. I have to…drill down through the layers to find the one I need. This time, many of the images did the same thing. That was helpful.”

  Rachel made a sound she hoped was also helpful. One thing he’d done is clear everything but this moment from her head. She tried to think what it would be like to be here and seeing the past— “So you see the past?”

  He hesitated his beak angling away from her. “I do.”

  What else did he see? Did she want to know? Not while wearing a red shirt, she decided.

  “I can see that would attract…trouble,” she said instead.

  “Indeed.” He shifted on her shoulder. “It has been helpful that this outpost has been empty for so long. And the population was not large.”

  He’d seen Garradians. Her mind might be blown.

  “I wish I could see what you see,” she said, wistfully. To see the past—she cut that off again.

  “It makes the present challenging,” he pointed out.

  “You can’t,” she shrugged, “turn it off?”

  “No, you can’t turn it off,” he said dryly.

  “I’m sorry. I’m kind of boggled if you must know.”

  “You are one of three people who know this,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. “I won’t, I’d never—”

  “If I had thought you would, I would not have told you.”

  Rachel felt an odd warmth in her chest. She’d been trusted, she was trusted by the leaders of this expedition, but not because they trusted her. No, they trusted because they had all sorts of threats they held over thanks to the non-disclosure agreements she’d signed. This was new. This was trust.

  Sir Rupert ruffled his feathers again, and said, “All that is left now is to place your palm on the panel at a right angle.”

  Moving on from the almost mushy moment. “Right.”

  She might have hesitated. It had been a long time since anyone used this module, a module they still didn’t understand. The red shirt felt like it got tighter. “Just touch, not push?”

  “Touch.”

  With a tiny pause for a silent prayer, she touched.

  There was that brief, stomach-churning feeling of going down, then sideways, and then something new. A kind of side action with some twist to it that left her insides not sure where to settle when it stopped abruptly. Her head whirled, and it took her a minute to realize the door had opened. They were there, wherever there was.

  “That was a rougher ride than usual.” Her voice sounded muffled and the pain in her ears indicated they’d gone deep.

  Light spilled out from the transport module creating a small circle of light in what was otherwise very dense darkness. Looking back, the transport module had smelled pretty good compared to what now rushed in on them. Smells so old, even if she’d known what they were she probably wouldn’t recognize them now.

  She yawned, trying to get her ears to pop. She hoped the ancient Garradians knew about the bends. She managed to get a partial pop and realized that the silence wasn’t total.

  Somewhere out there in the darkness, something was ticking.

  3

  Xaddek didn’t often go to his people. They came to him, usually with their knees knocking together from fear. Oh, the leg meat. It was different from other parts. There was something about stripping meat off the bone, even better if his meal was still alive. Paralyzed by his venom, he could taste the terror visible only in their eyes.

  The crew faded away at his approach because he’d been known—in the past—to cruise for a meal. His captain had pointed out the problem with this, and he’d stopped, but he did like seeing and smelling their fear.

  He reached the door only he could access. Even Savlf could not open this door, despite her impressive system manipulation skills. She was completely isolated from the crew. It was her fault. She’d tried to suborn different crew members to help her escape. She had not tried anything for some time, but he had found he slept better when she was locked away.

  The scanner recognized his eyes, and the hatch slid back. The room was dim, the temperature carefully controlled for the maximum viability of the sample. The web both covered and sustained her, feeding her and taking away her waste. It compressed her muscles because they’d found that humans lost mental tone when they lost too much body tone. She was plugged into a system that was as isolated as she was. He was not stupid enough to hook her up to a computer and give her access to his ship.

  His eyes admired the way the web covered and restrained her. He could see traces of pink skin between the strands of the web, but there were less of them after each visit. He would be sorry when there was no more visible skin since that made him hungry for a taste. Sometimes he added more webbing, and it increased if she struggled against it. She was not one to give in easily though it seemed her eyes—the only things really visible anymore—were duller than the last time he’d visited her. Even her mouth was covered, he noted. Her back talk he did not miss. He’d have shut her up sooner, but speech integration had taken time to set up.

  She’d been, according to some of his human crew, a lovely woman. Her eyes were an unusual shade of blue, the features and shape of her body pleasing to human eyes. He had agreed that she appeared…desirable. Her hair had been black, he thought. Yes, he was sure it was dark, increasing the contrast of white skin, eyes, and hair.

  Of the current crew, only the captain was left of those who had seen her before. No one else knew what existed behind this door. He suspected it would be even more difficult to get crew if they did know.

  “Savlf,” he murmured, moisture pooling in his mouth at the sight of her. His hunger for her was almost sexual when she was webbed. He was not certain why this was so. But her web-trapped body sent sharp waves of longing to leap and drink her blood to the very last drop, then rip her flesh from her lovely bones.

  She knew what he wanted. He read it in her eyes. It was the only way he could compel her to work for him. Well, that and the additional encouragement from the web. It amazed him how strong the will to live endured in certain humans. But perhaps it was fueled by a longing not to die as his meal. He had a feeling that if she could have ended her life herself, she would have.

  Hate sparked life in her eyes, but the spark was dim, a sullen futile hate. There was nothing she could do, and they both knew it. He did not need to be loved, just given exactly what he wanted when he wanted it.

  “The Najer,” he said. He’d never been able to get close enough to attempt planting a virus, so he’d secured Savlf for this task. Sometimes he had her do other things, but this was her central task, her reason for remaining uneaten. She had not been sufficiently motivated, even with the prospect of being eaten hanging over he
r head, so he’d upped the stakes. Do this, and I will free you from the web. Would he keep his promise? He was not certain. The web suited her. And it suited him. And he had not promised complete, or even endless freedom from the web. If she succeeded, it would be worth it to free her until she misbehaved again. And then go through the entrancing process of enslaving her again. She would never leave this place alive. But hope should keep her obedient.

  “Progress report,” he added when she didn’t speak.

  “I have made progress…”

  Since she’d lost the privilege of speech, the computer did it for her. It amused him that the computer removed all nuance from her voice. It was yet another way to remind her that she lived and died at his pleasure.

  There were brief signs of a struggle before the web forced her to say, “…master. I can track them.”

  He was pleased to hear this. “Show me.”

  Was he testing her? It was possible. That she could still struggle did not please him. Was that true? When she’d been brought aboard, he had tried to lure her to his side with the rewards that kept his crew aboard. Surely it was easier if she did not fight him? Would her work have been better? He was not so sure. They’d been meant to battle, to bring out the best in each other. He did not believe she’d have achieved this level of expertise without the web to focus her mind.

  Opposition sharpened his mind, too. He’d had to be innovative to trap Savlf in the first place.

  Star charts began to flash on one of her screens. Her lashes lowered as if she did not wish—or did not need—to see it.

  Her eyelids were the only thing the web could not control without blinding her. He’d considered taking this last but one sense from her, but he liked knowing she could see him, liked her seeing that he could move and she could not. Telling her would not be nearly as satisfying.

  He turned his many eyes to the screen as it finally ceased flashing and showed him what he wished to see.

  “Where?” He deliberately kept the questions short and open to misunderstanding. This gave him the option to punish her if she incorrectly interpreted what he wanted to know. It was a dance that was part of their meetings. When the web punished her, it tested both of them. The last time she’d fainted before he was about to give in and take a little taste of her. She smelled so much more enticing when she fought him. He’d been so close, he’d almost done it, but he knew he couldn’t have stopped. He needed to be honest with himself because no one else would.