Encrypted (40 page)

“
Is that a Turgonian
tenet? It’s fine to shoot a man you respect, but you don’t mess
with his lady?”

A faint smile stretched his lips. “Something
like that. My little brother...destroyed things for our whole
family. All I’m hoping to do at this point is get out of here alive
with some weapons to sell. Ideally, I’ll get those weapons and get
out of here before Starcrest shows up.”

“
What happens to Parkonis
and the other archaeologists? I assume selling weapons isn’t what
most of them signed on for.”

Lancecrest’s jaw
tightened. “This isn’t what
I
signed on for either, but we’re all stuck in this
together now. My brother didn’t make his choices alone. Everyone
here is going to be wanted for crimes against the emperor. We’re
all working for a split of the profits. And if you want
Starcrest—and Parkonis—to walk away from this unharmed, you’d best
get to work opening that weapons chamber up there.
You
can make sure
there’s no bloodshed.”

No bloodshed. Right. Until whoever he sold
the weapons to used them.

Better to let him think she would go along
with him though. “Get me the goggles.”

“
Lancecrest!” someone
called from the other side of the butte. “The Turgonians are over
the chasm!”

“
Already?” Lancecrest
cursed and jogged toward the speaker.

As he trotted away, Tikaya eyed the tunnel
near the cube cabinet, wondering if she could slip away before
someone caught up with her. But, no, it would not take Lancecrest
long to notice she did not follow, and for all she knew the tunnel
dead-ended. Besides, she wanted to copy that schematic, examine the
door symbols, and talk to Parkonis.

She jogged after Lancecrest. He disappeared
ahead of her, but she expected that by now. She kept going and
between one step and the next, the camp appeared. Crates,
backpacks, bedrolls, muskets and bows, and food sacks sprawled
about her. The scent of stale sweat mingled with the pervasive
guano stench.

Twenty people, several wearing marine
uniforms, stood around the wispy-haired fellow, who hunkered over a
bowl of water. A clairvoyant, she realized when she spotted images
of Bocrest’s men moving on the still surface.

“
How’d they get across?”
someone asked.

“
Built a
catapult.”

A marine whistled.

“
I wouldn’t have joined
this team if I’d known we’d be against Admiral Starcrest,” a woman
muttered.

“
Isn’t he
dead?”

“
We’ll
be dead if we tangle with him.”

“
He’s just a man,”
Lancecrest growled. “We’ve laid your wizard traps, and we know the
terrain best. The advantage is ours.”

Tikaya edged closer to the bowl, hoping to
catch sight of Rias. She wished she could communicate with him
somehow, let him know everything that mattered. For the moment, the
clairvoyant showed them Bocrest and Ottotark as they removed their
parachutes and gathered their gear.

“
Find Starcrest,”
Lancecrest said. “Let’s see what they’re planning.”

The image shifted, focusing on Rias and
Sicarius. Tikaya wrestled with the urge to kick the water bowl
over. Even if she did want to see Rias, it was better if Lancecrest
did not know what he planned. She took a step toward the bowl.
Lancecrest gripped her forearm to keep her back.

“
How was the ride?” Rias
asked.

“
Exhilarating,” Sicarius
said in a monotone.

“
I thought we might get a
yell of excitement or at least a smile out of you, but I see the
emperor has trained you well.”

“
Yes.”

It was like conversing with a rock. Tikaya
wondered why Rias bothered, especially when he ought to be worried
about her. Not that she wanted him to fall apart, but a little
agitation would have been flattering.

“
Scouts will go ahead,”
Bocrest said, somewhere beyond the edges of the vision. “See what
we’re up against.”

Rias took a step.

“
Not you, Admiral. We need
you back here planning brilliance, not wandering around looking for
your misappropriated camp follower.”

Rias’s jaw clenched and the tendons sprang
out on his neck. There was her agitation. And then some. He looked
like he might tear Bocrest’s head off.

Sicarius stopped whatever might have come
next in the conversation, raising his hand and saying, “Hold.”

He tilted his head, as if listening to
something, but his cool eyes stared straight through the water. The
clairvoyant flinched, and the image evaporated.

“
What is it?” Lancecrest
asked.

“
That young one has
unexpected perception for a Turgonian.”

“
He knows we’re watching?
So, what? Get them back. I want you on their every step, so we know
when they’re coming.”

The clairvoyant closed his eyes and draped
his arms across his knees, palms up. Nothing happened. “I can’t.
He’s blocking us somehow.”

Lancecrest’s fists clenched and unclenched.
“Who is that boy?” he asked Tikaya. “He’s not in uniform, and he’s
too young to be giving orders.”

She shrugged. “The marines didn’t tell me
much.”

Lancecrest considered her, and she thought
he might call Gali over, but the marines and relic raiders were
watching him, and he turned to them instead.

“
Time to get ready for
company, people. Morrofat, take your squad out. Your job is to
delay that team.” Lancecrest dug in a rucksack and pulled out a
clunky pair of goggles that reminded Tikaya of the eye protection
she had worn on the tundra. He tossed them to her. “You know what
your job is. We’ve found dangerous relics that we can throw at
Starcrest. If you care about him, you’d best get me those weapons
before he gets within range.”

CHAPTER 20

Tikaya stood near the spot where the bat had
been disintegrated. From there, the door to the weapons chamber was
visible, and the runes glowed beside it. No ropes bound her
hands—Lancecrest had decided she needed them for writing—but she
had a guard. Gali. The woman huffed and sighed as she paced about,
fiddling with a pistol. Her telepathy worried Tikaya more than the
weapon. She wanted to copy the cube schematic on the chance Rias
could do something with it. And she could escape the raiders long
enough to meet up with him.

“
You’re not looking at
them,” Gali snapped. “I imagine that’ll make the translation
difficult.”

“
I’m ruminating,” Tikaya
said.

“
On how to escape, I
know.” Gali slapped the pistol across her palm. “Ruminate on
getting through that door.”

Tikaya held the goggles before her
spectacles and peered through the magnifying lenses. The symbols
grew crisper, the nuances easier to make out. They were numbers.
Four rows of four, each different. She only recognized a few, but
she could look up the others with the sphere if she could find a
private place to take it out.

She pushed the tool from her mind. Better
these people did not know about it.

With the enhanced vision, she examined the
rest of the weapons chamber. A cuboid contraption hung from a
ceiling and was attached to a large pipe disappearing into the
cavern depths far above. Some kind of fan or ventilation system to
suck away fumes if there was a break or accident? Probably not fast
enough to save the life of the person inside, but if the door shut
and that fan activated perhaps destroying the weapons would not
prove deadly for everyone down here.

“
What does one do with the
symbols?” Tikaya asked. “Push them?”

“
I wasn’t there,” Gali
said, “but I heard Atner stood down here and moved them around with
telekinetics.”

Gali stretched a hand toward the butte. One
of the numbers indented and glowed red. She twitched her fingers,
and it slid one place to the right. The number on the right edge
disappeared and reappeared on the left.

“
How’d you do that?”
Tikaya asked.

“
A bit of sideways
pressure. The runes glide around naturally, as if they’ve been
greased. Atner fiddled around for days and finally got lucky. But
he only got in once and the symbols changed after that.”

“
But he got a rocket out.
How was he able to get it down without the web destroying it in
midair?”

Gali shrugged. “The web didn’t attack
it.”

“
So, the defense system
won’t attack what it’s supposed to defend?” Tikaya wondered if
there was anything else it would not attack.

The symbol winked off, though it did not
return to its original slot. Three red beams lanced out of the
clear door. Tikaya jumped, nearly dropping the goggles. The beams
scoured the air in front of the door. After a moment, they cut
off.

“
I guess if you don’t
punch in the correct code while you’re standing up there, you get
incinerated.” She chewed on the side of her mouth. “Your
telekinesis does offer a workaround the original builders probably
didn’t consider. If they were here as long ago as I suspect, humans
wouldn’t have had the skill yet. Relatively speaking, our command
of the mental sciences is a recent development in civilization.
It’s not something that started appearing until after we developed
agriculture and became more agrarian rather than hunter-gatherer.
More free time, creation of a leisure class, and—”

“
We didn’t bring you here
for a lecture,” Gali snapped. “Figure out how to get in before your
cursed Turgonian lover gets her.”

Tikaya turned her attention back to the
numbers. The ones she recognized were prime: three, five, seven,
eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen. Could the whole series just
be the first sixteen primes? She had not learned numbers beyond
twenty yet, so she would have to look them up. Presumably, the
sixteen digits had to be arranged in a specific order to open the
door. If Atner Lancecrest had pushed them randomly, he truly had
gotten ‘lucky.’ Rias could no doubt give her the exact odds of
guessing correctly, but what she remembered of studying
permutations in school suggested a ridiculously high number of
combinations.

She did not have time for guessing. If the
code changed regularly, it was probably a puzzle of some sort. If
one knew the goal, one had a better chance of solving it. Could it
be as simple as placing them in order? No, too obvious to someone
who spoke the language, and the scientists who had built this place
had surely had their own people in mind as potential trespassers,
not the cave-dwelling humans who had occupied the world at the
time.

There had to be more to it. Tikaya dug a
sheet of paper out and copied the numbers for later perusal.

A distant clanking started up. She cocked an
ear, trying to identify it. The noise had a muffled quality and did
not sound like it came from within the cavern. A few men ran out of
the camp and into a tunnel.

“
I want to take rubbings
of the panels too,” Tikaya said.

“
Whatever,” Gali
said.

Relieved, Tikaya pretended no more than
vague scientific curiosity as she copied the panels—and the
schematic on the inside of the cube cabinet.

“
Can you work those?” Gali
asked suspiciously.

“
No.” Tikaya closed the
cabinet and tucked the rubbings into her pocket along with the
numbers.

“
Tikaya?”

She turned to find Parkonis standing a few
feet away. The remaining marines and relic raiders carried bows or
firearms. Parkonis had nothing more offensive than a utility knife.
The last year had apparently not turned him into a fighter.

Gali backed away a few paces, giving them a
semblance of privacy.

“
Parkonis,” Tikaya said,
not sure what else to say.

He pushed a tangle of curly hair out of his
eyes. “I’m sorry I ran off.”

“
Earlier today?” she
asked. “Or a year ago?”

He grimaced.

“
What happened out there,
Par? You obviously got off your ship, but why couldn’t you come
home?”

“
The Turgonians sunk us,
just as you heard, but Atner Lancecrest happened by and rescued
those left alive. There were only four of us. He showed us the
runes from this place, and I was intrigued, of course. He swore us
to secrecy before telling us anything about them, then asked if we
wanted to join his team, to travel to the source and work on
translating a previously undiscovered language. He was leaving
right away to recruit others from Nuria and the islands. There was
no time to come home. It was a dream opportunity, Tikaya. I
couldn’t refuse.”

“
You don’t find it
suspicious that he just ‘happened by’ right after the Turgonians
attacked you? He was Turgonian himself. Maybe he wanted to appear a
benevolent rescuer, but actually set up the whole thing. Maybe he
had a deal with the captain of the ship that sank yours. All so he
could get his hands on a handful of grateful archaeologists. Are
you sure you had a choice about coming?”

“
That’s far-fetched,
Tikaya. Atner wasn’t a bad fellow.”

“
Wasn’t a—he killed
everyone in that fort out there. In a ghastly way. And those were
his countrymen!”

Parkonis winced. “He was desperate at that
point. We didn’t... I didn’t have anything to do with that. I
swear. I didn’t know about the weapons when I agreed to come. We
were just looking for relics, and in truth I only cared about the
language.”