Page 11 of Stellar Drift (Central Galactic Concordance)

Sairy sat on her airsled and watched as Houyen, Phen, and Koda checked their own airsleds one last time. Administrator Garamont flitted between them like an agitated hummingbird.

She wished they’d quit fiddling and just go.

Yes, the three-day hike would take them into the challenging terrain of the high cloud forest to the northwest, but they had plenty of gear and working comms. The last-minute delays gave her too damn much time to regret agreeing to participate in the town’s scientific expedition.

Oh, right, the “routine botanical survey.” She was happy to help misdirect Houyen’s inferior officer. She didn’t want the CPS in her business any more than the townspeople did.

Sairy stroked Kyala’s head. The gargoyle had been ready to leave thirty minutes ago.

Airsled trips usually brought new places to explore, which suited Kyala’s adventurous nature.

“Soon,” Sairy murmured, wishing it were true.

She regretted her decision to avoid communicating with Elkano unless it became necessary, not even via subvocalization.

At the time, she’d wanted to keep one of her secrets, but now she had no one to talk to.

If Houyen had asked her right after Axolotl Bend’s Very Bad Day, as she’d named it, she’d have sent him and the town a map or two, then vanished for a while until they went on their own or forgot about it.

But Houyen had told the truth about infinity fever spreading.

She’d since heard the story of how three Joro crew had stomped into Irakat Collective’s last trade day, demanding answers and a cure.

The townspeople had rebuffed Joro’s crew, telling them that the cure was a myth, just like the supposed treasure of Jalkapanga that they’d been questioning everyone about for months.

Then the lead enforcer, Pazhkeli, said they’d noticed that no one in the towns had died, and yet two of the construction crew had.

After a fairly heated argument, the townspeople managed to send the interlopers packing, but Sairy felt guilty that her secret treatments had left the locals vulnerable to future scrutiny.

People like Pazhkeli and his boss Falco Joro weren’t the type to take “no” for an answer.

She might even have stayed out of it despite the personal pleas for help.

Rainforest people were proud of their self-reliance, so it took a lot for them to do that.

She appreciated more than they’d ever know that they’d not asked questions when she’d first showed up three years ago, and had mostly respected her privacy ever since.

But the primary reason she’d agreed to go was that Houyen had unwittingly dropped a bombshell in her lap. He made a convincing case that a periodic maturity flight of cicada-like insects was the transmission vector of the infinity fever. Outbreaks had first been noted fourteen years ago.

Meaning the ship debris from her emergency landing in the rainforest couldn’t be the source.

That had left Sairy stunned. It was a good thing she’d been seated in the corner of the Irakat community room, waiting to hear why they’d invited her to the meeting in the first place.

It changed everything. If her leaking ship’s laboratory hadn’t contaminated the ablating pieces of incalloy, then her self-imposed cleanup task was done.

She hadn’t caused the illness; she’d merely been unlucky enough to catch it.

Thanks to the state-of-the-art xenobiology lab on board her ship and Elkano’s persistence, she’d been lucky enough to develop an effective treatment for it.

If they wanted, she and Elkano could take their hold full of incalloy scrap and move on, and maybe figure out what to do with themselves.

On the other hand, it changed nothing. The ejection event that had sent them tumbling out of transit space and burrowing into the side of a remote volcanic mountain was still an unfathomable mystery.

They knew too much and not nearly enough about what had happened.

Questions chased around in her head like angry hummingbirds.

Why had the mothership ejected them? Why had it sent them to Qal Corona, of all five hundred member planets in the Concordance?

How long had she been in cryosleep? What had awakened her once they’d arrived? What tasks had they left unfinished?

At best, she was missing in action, and the CPS black-box project leaders wanted her back.

At worst, they considered her a dangerous loose end and would destroy her and Elkano on sight to keep their secrets.

The only thing she knew for sure was that she didn’t trust the CPS to have their best interests at heart.

When Koda invited her to come and bring her maps, she’d said “yes” partly out of curiosity about the mountain, and partly out of gratefulness to Houyen. His dogged determination had unwittingly freed her. She owed him the chance to prove his theory.

She used to be better at waiting, a skill she’d cultivated in the military because getting antsy didn’t make the time go faster. But now that she had options — maybe — she wanted the expedition over so she could consider her life’s next chapter.

Houyen and Koda finally crossed the flitter pad to where she and Kyala sat in the shelter of a tall, wide tree. Koda pointed a thumb back behind her, where Phen and Garamont were discussing something that made Garamont wave his hands and Phen cross her arms resolutely.

“Sorry about the delay,” said Koda. “Garamont is having an anxiety attack. My beloved wife’s esteemed father is being an overprotective pain in the ass.

He thought the hike would be three days, not six.

He’s been trying to convince us we need double the people and equipment, or that we should call in the planetary government and let them deal with it. ”

Sairy hadn’t noticed the family resemblance before, but she did now.

“He’s now worked himself into accusing Phen of secretly going after the cursed treasure.

” Koda made a disgusted noise. “Like she cares anything about money. She loves hiking and studying insects.” She tossed a dark glance at the wildly gesticulating Garamont.

“There’s a good reason we moved our business to Axolotl Bend. ”

Houyen’s expression didn’t give him away, but Sairy had the impression his patience was wearing thin. He cast questioning looks at Sairy and Koda. “What’s with the treasure rumor? Joro’s crew seems to actually believe it, but I didn’t think the locals did.”

Koda took a breath to speak, but got distracted when Garamont shouted and stomped his foot at his daughter. Phen looked thunderous.

Sairy shrugged. “It’s supposed to be hidden at the top of Jalkapanga Mountain.

No one agrees what it is — loot from a theft, rare metals deposit, or maybe an alien ruin that miraculously survived the whole planetary terraform process.

It’s probably been kept alive by kids who like a good ghost story. ”

Koda laughed. “Says the Ghost of Jalkapanga.”

Sairy rolled her eyes. "Don't start with that again."

"Why not? You know this part of the rainforest better than locals who have been here fifty years, and none of them knows where you live." Koda’s face took on an impish look. “My favorite rumor is that you’re a fire spirit who lives in a dormant volcano core. Piss you off enough and you’ll reignite it. ”

Houyen shook his head. “Didn’t she fix your comms gateway when it went down and the fastest repair service was thirty days out? And she helped you clean up after the flood a few ten-days ago. From what I’ve seen, you should call her the Good Neighbor of Jalkapanga.”

“Well, sure,” said Koda, waving off Houyen’s words, “but who wants to be called something so utterly unromantic?"

Houyen’s unexpected defense touched her. She resisted sending him a grateful glance that Koda would see and undoubtedly remark on.

Koda was a skilled weaver of plant-based fibers and a savvy entrepreneur, but sometimes annoyed people with her teasing.

Sairy had heard a rumor that Koda was an empath.

Sairy would have thought a minder talent like that would have made her less inclined to irritate people.

Phen, her wife of at least a decade, clearly had the patience of a saint.

Phen broke away from Garamont and walked toward them under the tree.

Phen was built like a tank, all well-toned muscle mixed with elegant grace, even when she was obviously ready to punch something — or more likely, someone.

Sairy gathered she’d done two tours of duty as a gunnin in the galactic military’s Ground Div before returning to Qal Corona and her extended family.

The hard set to her face was as perturbed as Sairy had ever seen her.

“Let’s go,” said Phen, her consonants percussively sharp.

For once, Koda simply nodded and crossed to her airsled.

To Sairy’s great relief, within ten minutes, they checked comms, strapped in, and were airborne.

At a location they’d chosen downslope of their launch point, they landed the airsleds long enough to deploy a temporary comms relay point while Houyen used his ranger access to download realtime weather satellite data.

The top of the rift was relatively flat and clear.

The edge of the cloud forest started there.

Sairy used the quick stop to check on Kyala.

The gargoyle liked flying and didn’t mind the custom eye googles that Sairy had designed and printed for her.

The gargoyle’s thoughts were starting to trend longingly toward a midday meal.

Truth be told, so were Sairy’s. The human mealpacks she’d brought would never win culinary prizes, but they were compact and self-contained.

And the universe knew she had enough of the damned things.

She noticed Houyen had similar provisions.