Page 12 of Stellar Drift (Central Galactic Concordance)

Phen’s airsled had a large, heavy coldbox that her agitated parent had insisted they bring. Sairy guessed it had been a matter of picking her battles, considering how unhappy Garamont had been when they left. He’d advocated for the expedition. Why he’d imagined Phen would stay home was perplexing.

“The weather looks good, but I wouldn’t trust the ‘no rain’ part of the forecast,” said Houyen as he shared the information across their temporary private network.

They were using a set of earwires to create a closed comms net.

“Uninhabited areas like the Reserve have low priority as far as allocating AI resources or analysts.”

“So what else is new?” muttered Koda. “Let’s hope the satellite images match our maps.”

Houyen ignored the interruption. “Anyway, I think that, as Sairy recommended, the top of the Rift Valley is still the best place to park the sleds and continue on foot.”

After the meeting in Irakat, she and Elkano had reviewed all their camera recordings of the target area.

Once they’d known what to look for, evidence of the insect outflux was plain to see.

They only ate one species of puffy-leafed shrub that was poisonous to most other would-be munchers.

The downslope trails of denuded shrubs all converged at the top of the rift.

Higher in the cloud forest, she’d remembered noting a curious scattering of silvery leaves that she now suspected were wuzzy-bug carapaces.

According to Phen, wuzzy bug adult wings cracked the nymph’s outer shell, but not all the pieces fell off until flight and feeding.

Or something like that. Sairy really didn’t want to learn any more about creepy, disease-carrying insects than she had to.

While the expedition could fly a flitter all the way to the top of the mountain, the dense canopy and jumbled topography offered no place to land, and no way to tell if the area was even accessible on foot.

Both Houyen and Phen were convinced the breeding ground would be high in the cloud forest, away from natural predators that would ordinarily keep them in check.

They were looking for the flightless nymph form, not the adult winged version that came in sporadic waves and made a mess.

As far as Sairy knew, she was the only member of the group who had ventured into the cloud forest at all.

And she wouldn’t have, either, except she’d found a sizeable chunk of incalloy that had taken her four days to cut into pieces small enough to haul away in her airsled’s trailer.

She wasn’t a fanciful person, but she considered it an eerie place.

She’d made the mistake of repeating her description.

“I thought ghosts weren’t afraid of anything.” Koda’s smirk made Sairy roll her eyes.

“Ice it, Koda,” said Phen, without rancor.

“Oh, fine. This is going to be a long six days if we can’t have any fun.”

Sairy couldn’t agree more.

On the flight to the top of the rift, Sairy opened a private channel to Elkano to give him updates. The cameras she’d brought would soon be out of Elkano’s range, so the experimental comms implant in her head and chest would be the relay.

“Have I lost my sense of humor?” she subvocalized to Elkano. “I don’t remember being so ready to snap at someone trying to get a rise out of me.”

“I see no way to answer your question,” said Elkano unhelpfully. “However, I am interested in the resurgence of the ‘cursed treasure’ meme. According to the records I have collected, it tends to coincide with the periodic wuzzy-bug infestation.”

“Hmmm.” She wasn’t going down that ant trail with Elkano.

He was brilliant in his way, but he found memes fascinating and saw patterns everywhere.

A recurring favorite was the famous Ayorinn Legacy forecast from decades ago, and the subsequent mysterious poetic quatrains — supposedly coded messages — would change the galaxy and set all minders free.

As if the Citizen Protection Service would ever let that happen.

There was nothing they wouldn’t do to keep the galactic peace, or at least their vision of it.

“If you’re bored, Elkano, maybe you could work on the problem of whether or not anyone has been looking for us. ”

Since their arrival three and a half years ago, they’d been extremely wary of tapping any local or planetary comms for more than a few stolen milliseconds at a time.

Their interpersonal comms were an unbreachable closed system, but any external identifier was unavoidably unique.

Neither of them dared ping anything with open channels to the galaxy at large.

The security precaution was still valid, but now Sairy found herself chafing at the inactivity.

It was all Houyen’s fault that they no longer had a good reason to stay. It was also Houyen’s fault that she wanted to stay for the chance to get to know the man better. She was a pool of contradictory chaos and would be the first to admit it.

The top of the rift valley turned out to be a better place than they’d imagined to leave their airsleds.

The floods that had threatened the towns must have started higher on the mountain.

Flattened trees and tumbled rubble created a half-decent landing pad, as long as they avoided the mud.

A panting, drooling Kyala waited patiently for Sairy to remove the goggles and release the harness, then bounded into the first mud slick she came to and rolled in delight.

Sairy chuckled and let her have her fun. For one, they’d all be muddy sooner or later. And for another, the mud was excellent protection against the biting flies and hungry mosquitoes. Humans could deploy nets under their hats, but gargoyles would just a soon eat a net as wear one.

Houyen pointed toward a smaller group of trees that had escaped the flood damage. “If we move the sleds under there and cover them with tarps, they’ll probably be here when we get back.”

Phen laughed. “Good thinking, Ranger,” she drawled in exaggerated accents. “Dangerous rainforest rifts ain’t no place to leave transports lyin’ around in the open.”

“Huh,” said Houyen with an admirable straight face. “I was more worried about the dropbears.”

“Nah.” Phen eyed the tops of trees. “It’s the jaguars you really gotta worry about. Sneaky little buggers will nibble your toes off.”

Koda laughed. “I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

“Nope,” Phen agreed.

At Houyen’s questioning look, Koda gave him a rueful smile.

“Phen and I met in the military. She kindly brought me home with her. I grew up in a megacity and knew jack-all about nature, but I said I’d read some books.

Phen and her cousins warned me about all the big predators that live in the rainforest. They strung me along for most of a year.

I wouldn’t go out at night, and I insisted on bringing guns to bed.

They finally relented when Phen realized I really meant it when I’d said I loved her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. ”

“Well, who could blame me? Koda is gorgeous. She could have anyone she wanted. I’m… not.”

Koda stepped over a branch to close the distance between her and Phen. “You are to me.”

The tender kiss they shared had Sairy looking away. Moments like that deserved all the privacy she could give them.

A distinctive ping tone pattern jarred her back to the real world.

Houyen looked almost startled as he brought up his forearm and tapped the gauntlet-style percomp he wore. “Ranger Brannezzo. What can I do for you?”

Sairy noted that he didn’t use a holo image and let them all hear the call.

“It’s what I can do for you,” said a mid-baritone voice.

“The Irakat Administrator says you and some civilians are doing an entomological survey in an unmapped area and need my help. I am the official bug guy in the station, after all.”

“Thanks for the offer, but he’s mistaken. It’s just a botanical survey, like I do every quarter.” Houyen frowned. “I thought you were in Eolium.”

“I was.” The voice sounded aggrieved. “Matsurgan told me to get my ass back to base via fast shuttle and join your group before the town Administrator made a stink with CPS HQ. I’m just following orders. Where are you, anyway?”

Houyen cast an assessing glance upward, where clouds clung to the mountaintop like a drift of fluffy seed pods. “About twenty-seven kilometers northwest of Irakat Collective, at the lower edge of Jalkapanga Mountain’s cloud forest.”

“Where? Never mind. Send me the coordinates and I’ll be there as soon as I get my gear together and pull a flitter from the garage.”

Houyen shook his head. “No place to land a flitter. We parked our airsleds along with a ping geolocator and are hiking up the rest of the way on foot.”

“What? Why?” His tone implied he thought the idea was insane.

To be fair, thought Sairy, he wasn’t entirely wrong.

Houyen pinched the bridge of his nose. “Because plant samples won’t obligingly collect themselves.

According to Ranger records, Jalkapanga Mountain’s cloud forest has never been ground-surveyed.

Not once. Not even by the original settlement company when they turned the Nature Reserve over to the planetary government one hundred and eighty years ago. ”

“Hey, Ranger,” yelled Phen, as if she wasn’t less than three meters away from Houyen’s percomp. “Tell my asshole father we’re going after the treasure, just like he thought, and there’s nothing he can do about it!”

“Treasure? You mean it’s real? I thought Pazhkeli was just mad about what the villagers said.”

“No, it’s not real.” Houyen’s exasperation was plain on his face, though he kept it out of his tone.

“Yes, it is!” shouted Phen. “Real as rain! And it’ll all be ours!”

Koda tried to pull her away. “Not helping, Phen.”

Houyen turned his back on the struggling pair and caught Sairy’s eye as he tapped his gauntlet.

“I just sent you the coords for this spot and the geo-locator relay, but I’m not the leader here, I’m just tagging along to do my survey.

If our cooperating partners want to start up the mountain while the weather holds, I’m going with them. ”

“Who is the leader?” Brannezzo’s tone seemed sharper.

“Me and the Ghost of Jalkapanga!” shouted Phen as Koda half-dragged her toward the biggest airsled. “We’re gonna be rich! We’ll buy our own starship! Tell my father to suck flux!”

“Who’s making all that racket?”

“The leader.” His mouth twitched in a momentary smile. “I think she’s miffed.”

Sairy snorted. Easy-going Phen was usually slow to anger, but once she blew, she rivaled a volcanic eruption. Her meddling parent was probably in for a rough few ten-days after they got back.

“She sounds like she’s gliding high on the local exotic chems. Better wait until I get there.”

“Like I said, not my decision. Ping me when you’re in the area and I’ll send you an updated location and route advisory.”

Houyen tapped the percomp controls and dropped his arm. He started to speak, then seemed to think better of it. With tightened lips and jerky movements, he set about guiding his airsled under the stand of trees.

Kyala, who now wore enough mud that it was dripping off her, sidled up to Sairy. She didn’t need the mental connection to know that the gargoyle wanted to be off having adventures, not perplexed by human conversations.

“You and me, both. Come on, let’s get the sled stowed and covered.”

She’d managed three and a half years of waiting and wondering. Now she just needed to survive five more days.