Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (15 page)

At the bottom of the mountain, another rawboned Prian man took their names and told them that their trucks had been delayed. They waited on a sort of long porch of cracked concrete until a caravan pulled up to the curb, cursing and shouting at other drivers. A yellow-haired woman signaled them from the lead vehicle and did not offer to help their customers load the trucks.

Xen handed out maps to the dig site and then the teams scattered to pile into each of the trucks. At his request, Maeve went with Gripper. She was the Arboran's second choice, but Xia wanted to spend these final hours with Xen, before the Blue Phoenix carried them all back into space. As they climbed up into the last truck, the driver winked at Maeve and then stared wide-eyed at Gripper.

"Bloody hells, what is that?" he asked Maeve, who was struggling to find a comfortable place for her wings.

"He is an Ixthian experiment," she answered. It was not the first time she had used that particular lie. "He was grown from an artificial redprint."

The driver whistled. "Ain' never seen anything like it. Musta been one hell of a tube they grew you in, big fella."

"Uh, yeah," Gripper said forlornly.

"That what happened to your face? You get smashed up on the side?"

"Huh? What's wrong with my face?"

"Nothin' at all." The Prian trucker fell strategically silent.

They followed the rest of the caravan through Pine Spire. The Prians wrapped themselves in long coats, thick knitted hats and scarves tucked into their collars. But most of the hair peeking out from hats was a similar dark blond. All of the suspicious eyes were the same pale, icy blue that matched the faded blue sky.

Deep violet shadows lay over the city as the small white sun struggled to rise up over the needle-like mountains. Gripper, who had never been to Prianus, stared out the windows.

"Look at them. I've never seen mountains like that!" He rubbed his shortened ear. "Is there anything at the top? Look at the trees. They stop only halfway up."

"Only one fifth of Prianus is capable of supporting human life," Maeve said.

"That's still more than Hyzaar, right?" Gripper asked.

Maeve shrugged. She did not know. "Perhaps, but Hyzaar is a considerably more temperate and hospitable world."

"No one ever called this the bright spot of the galaxy," their driver agreed. "What brings you–?"

He shouted in alarm as a small, dented airplane dropped out of the sky, roaring down over the busy road. Thick black smoke trailed from one sputtering engine and the sides were scored by laser burns.

The ship swooped to one side and grazed a tall starscraper. The wing tore through windows, spraying the city below in broken glass, then caught on something more substantial. Metal and bystanders screamed as the plane slammed into the side of the building and tumbled down toward the street.

Something metallic glinted in the billowing smoke. A battle-scarred Raptor fighter flew down from the shadow of the mountains and fired huge magclamps on thick cables. One of them arced off target, but three more slammed into the side of the falling plane.

The Raptor climbed sharply, yanking it skyward. But under the tensions of the clamps and cables, the other plane's hull was peeling away like paper. The ship was never meant to be carried like this and was falling again, tugging the Raptor down with it.

Another pair of Raptors dropped out of thin clouds and fired smaller, more carefully aimed clamps. These found more secure anchors on the exposed frame and tugged the faltering plane skyward again. As quickly as they had come, the three Raptors and their prisoner flew away again, vanishing into the distance.

Maeve did not realize that she had been holding her breath. She made herself relax and slumped beside Gripper, who was still staring in slack-jawed wonder at the aftermath of the scene. Their driver shook his fist and swore in equal measure at the police and their target.

________

The delay in traffic cost them another twenty cenmarks in fees, but by late afternoon, the trucks were out of Pine Spire and climbing up into the Kayton Mountains. The jagged spine of granite and greenish serpentine speared high into the clouds. Steep roads wove up into the clinging cold, through emaciated but tenacious forests of fir and aspen trees.

After a sidelong glance at their driver – who was absorbed by navigating the steep, icy mountain roads – Gripper twisted as much as he could in his seat, turning to face Maeve.

"I didn't get to give Silver the polytomograph," he whispered.

"I heard," Maeve said. The Blue Phoenix was a small ship.

"She came looking for it before I was done." Gripper rubbed his long ear nervously. "I've got to try something else, Smoke. What do you think?"

Maeve considered, chewing her lip as she thought. "What about flowers?" she asked.

"Flowers!" Gripper forgot to whisper. He brightened visibly. "That's a great idea! Girls love sweets."

He licked his wide lips, indicating that perhaps girls were not the only ones who might enjoy a treat.

"That is not quite what I meant," Maeve said. "Even if it were, you may have to wait. I do not think that there are many flower sellers in the Prian mountains."

"I guess not…" Gripper looked out the window.

They were up above the trees. Some pale-leaved shrubs pushed tough, ropey roots through the rocks – and in a few places, the road – but little else grew so high in the mountains.

Beyond the road, the ground dropped steeply into the distance. Far below was the skirt of firs and pines, dark green and gray. Beyond that was a narrow, jagged valley, full of cluttered, blocky gray shapes. The city of Pylos, larger than Pine Spire but no more attractive.

At least the traffic was better up here. In fact, Maeve had seen no other vehicles for hours. Not on the ground, at least. Like the birds they loved, the Prians seemed to prefer flying to crawling over the ground. Gripper had his face glued to the window and pointed out another Raptor-styled fighter that flew overhead.

"It looks just like Freezer's ship," he commented excitedly.

"He stole it from this planet," Maeve said. The truck driver gave her a strange look, but had to keep most of his attention on the aging, crumbling road.

There were no trees or plants of any kind now, only greenish lichen that covered the stones in dark, frondy blotches. Blue-white glaciers lurked in crevices and ravines like great, pale leopards, beautiful but deadly to the unwary traveler.

The trucks labored in the thinning air. Engines coughed and wheezed, slowing their progress to a crawl. At her driver's request, Maeve radioed up to Xen in the lead vehicle. "Are we nearing our destination?" she asked.

"We should be there in about half an hour," Xen said. "I think. The signal is a little scattered up this high."

They carefully crossed an arched bridge over a deep crevice. It creaked ominously and swayed in the wind. Maeve looked down over the bridge's edge at the wisps of clouds that raced below and flashed with veins of white as they unleashed spitting flurries of sleet into the distant river.

The caravan finally came to a stop in a flat moraine of grainy gabbro. A row of heavily insulated tent domes hunkered in the middle of the glacier-carved plain beside a pair of work-worn trucks and a scratched red and green car. The last was stenciled in large block letters: POLICE.

Maeve sat up from her tired slouch. Her wings ached. What were the police doing up here?

When the caravan pulled to a stop and parked in a semicircle, Maeve and Gripper gratefully climbed out of their truck. The fairy slid on a patch of ice and beat her wings for balance, but the air was too thin. She fell to the frozen ground just as Duaal emerged. He took one look at Maeve and burst out laughing. A moment later, he was coughing as he tried to breathe at the high altitude. Maeve could not help a tiny smirk.

Xen walked toward the tents and put his hands to his mouth. "Doctor Kemmer Andus? Are you here?" he called.

"First tent on the right!" answered a muffled voice from the indicated dome.

"Panna, will you take care of unloading?" Xen asked.

His assistant nodded. "Sure, professor."

Gripper remained behind to help Panna, but the rest followed Xen into the first tent on the right. Closer now, Maeve could see that it was not the domes that were white, but thick layers of frost that covered them. She touched it and came back with powdery, feathery ice on her gloves. Kemmer must have been up in these mountains for some time.

There were two human men inside, one dressed in the same sort of long coat and boots Maeve had seen back in Pine Spire. The other wore a long-sleeved uniform in dark blue with a Talon laser pistol on his hip. With the man's short blond hair and Prian blue eyes, Maeve felt a jolt of recognition like an electric shock.

Logan…?

But it was not Logan Coldhand, of course. This Prian was older than her hunter and a long burn scar along his cheek tugged one corner of his mouth down into a perpetual frown. There was an aged shield-shaped badge pinned to his chest, the brass even more scarred than the cop who wore it.

Either Kemmer Andus kept an incredibly messy house or else something terrible had happened. The tent was full of overturned tables and datadexes scattered across the floor, many with screens spiderwebbed in cracks or entirely snapped in half.

Kemmer sat slumped in a chair, rubbing his eyes. Though he was probably about the same age as the police officer – somewhere in his late thirties – he wore his age much more handsomely. Kemmer had a square jaw and high cheekbones, all roughened by a few days of stubble. His hair was the darkest that Maeve had ever seen on a Prian, almost brown. He looked up at the newcomers.

"You must be Professor Xen," he said in the increasingly familiar accented Aver. "I hope you brought a lepton microscope."

Xen blinked his colorful eyes. "Yes, I am. And we did."

"Good." Kemmer stood and smoothed his shirt.

"Why? Don't you have an L-scope here?" Xen asked.

"Well, we did. It was stolen earlier this morning – along with some other equipment – while the rest of us were down below." He went to one wall of the tent. There was a small hole in the insulation and a spray of dried blood around it. Kemmer wiggled one finger in the puncture. "They shot one of my diggers."

Xen paled. He could not seem to think of anything to say.

Tiberius sighed. "Don't know what exactly a lick-on microscope is, but it sounds expensive. It would be worth a trip up into these mountains to snare it."

"This is Captain Cerro," Kemmer said, gesturing to the blue-uniformed police officer. "He's taken my report, but he can't be bothered to stay to protect my dig or my base camp."

Cerro did not flinch at the archeologist's bitterness. "We'll recover your equipment and bring in the guilty party as soon as we can, sir, but I'm afraid we can't spare the manpower to post a sentry. We have all of Pylos to protect."

"Welcome to Prianus," Kemmer sighed.

Tiberius smiled broadly at the younger cop. He extended his hairy, calloused hand. "Captain Cerro, is it?"

"It is." Cerro took Tiberius' hand firmly.

"Tiberius Myles. I was captain of the Blacktails before I retired."

Cerro smiled with half his mouth. "The Blacktails? From the Oaks?"

"Those are my boys, my fine boys. I've been off-world for a few years now. How they're doing?"

"I don't get a lot of news all the way from Oak, but I'm sorry to say that the Blacktails got shot down last year. Only three of them survived. Actually, I sent one of my pilots out to shore up the new squadron."

Tiberius nodded heavily. "The boys will keep flying, through high heaven and hollow hell."

Kemmer had been listening to the exchange with frank interest. "Captain Myles, if I understand this correctly, you used to serve in the Prian police. Right?"

"That's right." Tiberius beamed proudly.

"This isn't the first loss we've suffered and this expedition can't take much more," he said. "Captain, would you be willing to stay on to provide security for my project?"

Professor Xen tore his eyes from the blood on the tent wall. "Yes," he added quickly. "I would be happy to pay you for your time, Please stay, Captain Myles."

"I don't know…" said Tiberius.

"We could use the work," Duaal told him. "Just fuel and food ate up a lot of Xen's money."

"Duaal's right." Xia's antennae twitched. "And if Doctor Kemmer just lost a digger, I'd be happy to fill in."

"Do you have any experience?" the Prian archeologist asked.

"Only a few classes," she admitted. "I don't have any field experience."

Kemmer did not look at all happy with this answer.

"Xia's a surgeon," Xen said. "She's a fast learner and a light touch."

"If it means that Captain Myles will stay, then I'll take it." Kemmer ran a hand over his dark hair and looked at Tiberius again. "Well?"

"Maeve?" He turned to his first mate.

She thought for a moment, considering the terrain outside. "You said that the crime was committed while you were
down below
. Where is your site, Doctor Kemmer? It seems to me that you have two locations to protect."