Page 1 of Stellar Drift (Central Galactic Concordance)
The morning’s misty rain had left everything in the rainforest dripping, including Sairy.
Sweat streams ran down her neck as she leaned the shovel against the gnarled, moss-covered tree trunk.
The fine white net she wore under her hat tickled her face, but it needed to stay under her collar or she’d be a walking feast for the mosquitoes.
She retraced her steps through the rough-cut path she’d made through the thin-leaved shrubs to where Kyala waited.
At one meter tall and densely muscled, the genetically-engineered gargoyle looked like a terrifyingly efficient killer.
Which was a shame, because she’d really like to be a pampered lap pet.
Singing always pleased Kyala, so Sairy hummed a nonsense tune as she checked that the harness was tight and the rope carabiners were securely hooked in place. Kyala responded by licking the air near Sairy’s nose.
“Thank you,” said Sairy. It had taken her two years to convince the gargoyle not to use her wide, blood-red tongue to slather Sairy’s face with slobber.
When Sairy had found Kyala injured and abandoned in the rainforest, the gargoyle’s sharp teeth and oversized claws had made her wary.
Gargoyles were hideously expensive hybrids that blended whatever mammalian lines the genetic designers could get away with, but seemed to have a chaos cauldron of canine genes.
Rich people enjoyed owning dangerous creatures that looked ready to eat the faces of their enemies.
But Sairy couldn’t ignore the waves of need and hope coming from her.
Helping her, healing her, was the best decision Sairy had ever made.
She couldn’t ask for a better companion.
She turned to slide the loops of rope onto her arms and just below her elbows. Stomping her feet to set her booted feet in place, she flexed her knees.
“Now, Kyala.”
Sairy pulled, using her leg and core muscles. The gargoyle’s claws dug into the ground, and her broad shoulders bulged with effort. Sairy clenched her jaw and strained with all her might.
The three-meter-long chunk of incalloy stubbornly refused to budge.
Her treaded boots slipped, landing her on her butt. Again.
“Enough,” said Sairy. She sent Kyala a mental request to relax.
Dropping her arms, she let the rope fall, then stood and picked her way carefully over the flood-tumbled rocks to where Kyala sat.
A noisy bellbird somewhere in the canopy trees above let out a piercing two-tone call that always reminded Sairy of a starship’s airlock alarm.
In the distance, two more birds answered.
Since living in the rainforest the last three and a half years, Sairy had noticed her hearing had improved.
She didn’t always know what she was listening to, but she heard it.
Even the tech equipment in her home sounded noticeably louder than it used to. Funny what isolation did to people.
She looked skyward through the uneven break in the canopy, eyeing the clouds.
They looked too thin to be bringing rain, but that could change fast on this part of the planet.
The kilometer-long gash in the tree line owed its existence to a flash flood about fifty days before.
It had tumbled boulders like they weighed nothing, tearing out shrubs and toppling trees in its wake.
That same flood had uncovered the piece of incalloy she was trying to recover now.
Damnit. All she and Kyala had to show for the previous two hours of digging an outline channel around it was sore muscles, rivers of sweat, and many coats of mud.
The jagged piece of starship debris wasn’t going anywhere. It was as stuck in place as she was. But the jungle had likely hidden more pieces that she needed to find.
She stroked the panting gargoyle’s broad, charcoal-gray head and unhooked the harness. “Let’s take a break.”
Kyala leaned her body into Sairy’s thighs and sent a hopeful thought, making her laugh.
“Yes, treats and petting, too.” Kyala’s projected thoughts rarely came in words, but those were two of her favorites.
For all that her previous owner had treated her abominably, Kyala adored interacting with humans who could rub her ears and open food containers.
Sairy tapped the earwire adhered to her jaw and hooked into her ear canal.
“Elkano, do another scan, would you? Maybe there’s a deeper section that’s acting like an anchor.
Otherwise, I’d have thought the flood would have picked it up.
” Thanks to her self-assigned project of extracting the metal pieces, she had detailed maps of a large area near her home.
The location of this piece suggested she might need to expand the search perimeter again.
It gave her something better to do than wonder why she and Elkano ended up burrowed deep in a nature reserve on a civilized planet.
Exploration starships were supposed to, well, explore.
Elkano’s warm and pleasant midrange male voice sounded in her ear. “Sure. Give me five minutes.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of their three cameras lift off from the tree branch and swoop down toward the recalcitrant hunk of starship metal.
She could have used her enhanced implanted skulljack to communicate with Elkano, but she made a habit of talking out loud. It helped her think better and feel less alone. Kyala was a joy, but did not carry on conversations.
From what Elkano had found out from stealthy queries of the planetary net, pet trade designers had genetically engineered gargoyles as part of a fantasy creature trend from decades ago.
Kyala stood about a meter tall and looked like a cross between a lethal clouded leopard and a massive war dog.
She couldn’t help her terrifying appearance, with mottled gray and green fur and a wide, square jaw that held plenty of teeth.
Sairy had come across her in a clearing nearly three years ago, hurt, sad, and deeply lonely.
Sairy had been stunned to discover she also could sense Kyala’s emotions and thoughts.
Animals weren’t supposed to have abilities like human telepathic and empathic minders.
At the time, she’d put it down to a fluke of pet-trade breeding.
That shady industry never let pesky laws or ethics stand in the way of profits.
Since then, Sairy had begun to suspect that she might have made the connection herself.
Somehow, she seemed to have developed an animal affinity minder talent since landing on Qal Corona.
Before, she’d only had a fixer talent that gave her advantages in understanding and working with mechanical things and organized systems. She’d never known anyone who developed more minder talents after puberty, much less at age forty-three.
However, the Citizen Protection Service, the galactic military agency that was supposed to understand and monitor such things, had many secrets.
And even fewer ethics than the pet trade.
She patted the gargoyle’s damp shoulders. “You’re a good frien…”
Kyala suddenly stood and looked up, her pointed ears widened.
Sairy heard it, too. A small flitter — a modified military aircar, really — flying low enough that it couldn’t miss seeing her and the gargoyle if anyone was looking. Moments later, it appeared, just skimming the top of the tallest trees.
Even as she recognized the aircar, it wobbled as if blown by a nonexistent wind, then descended to a graceless landing in the widest part of the flood-channel clearing.
The vehicle slid to a halt a scant two meters in front of a volcanic rock outcropping that could have seriously compromised the distinctive bubble-shaped canopy.
The large letters on the side confirmed that it belonged to the Makaan Nature Reserve Ranger Service.
Unless someone had stolen the aircar for a joyride, Ranger Houyen Albasrey was at the controls.
The RRS had other rangers, but he was the only one that anyone had reported seeing in the rainforest the last four years.
Before that, according to the locals, ranger visits were rarer than triple blue moons.
Albasrey had made regular appearances every twenty or thirty days ever since he’d arrived.
And he was more than just a handsome face and a ready smile.
He was a good listener and put his plant-affinity minder talent and botanist training to good use in helping the locals with permaculture projects to create symbiotic relationships with the ever-challenging environment.
He seemed to get along with the more colorful personalities in the local towns, too.
Better than Sairy did, who found quick reasons to be elsewhere when people pushed her boundaries.
As much as she liked the man, which was truthfully too much for her own peace of mind, she didn’t want to talk to him now.
The clearing was too close to her hidden home.
Nor did she want to answer any questions about what she was doing.
It was a lot easier to evade personal questions when running into him in the town of Irakat’s regular trade day than one-on-one in the middle of the rainforest.
Sairy kicked the bright blue rope into the mud, then started walking toward the trees. “Come on, Kyala, let’s get a drink and see what’s in the cold box.”
Doubts snuck up on her as she retraced her path back to her airsled.
Houyen’s rough landing was unusual. He wasn’t reckless, at least as far as she’d seen.
If his military aircar had mechanical trouble, she could probably tell him what needed fixing.
In one of her previous life chapters, she’d been part of an air and ground vehicle maintenance unit.
On the other hand, maybe he was tired and just needed a rest. In which case, he didn’t need any help from her, and she should leave him alone.