Kasha rode the elevator inside the enormous hollow tree up to the forager operation center. Today she wasn’t going out into the jungle to hunt or to the fields to harvest. No, today she was going to put in air hours. She was going to fly a gig.
She stepped off the elevator onto the circular balcony and followed it around to the tall arched doorway. She entered the enormous room that housed the gigs—the two-seater flying craft the foragers used.
“Hello, Kasha,” Durgen greeted her. “I’ll be flying with you today.”
“Will you let me do the piloting this time?” Kasha asked. “Every time we go up together, you take the command chair.”
“You’re still new,” Durgen argued.
“How will I learn if you don’t let me take the lead?” Kasha demanded.
“You’re right,” Durgen admitted. “We can do this your way.”
Kasha felt a thrill of excitement. Not only was she going to pilot, she had actually gotten Durgen to change his mind about something!
“What’s the assignment?” Kasha asked as she and Durgen pushed a bright yellow gig to the launch platform.
“We’re going to see if the fields are ripe in the far east,” Durgen said. “No sense in a foraging team going all the way out there if the fruit isn’t ready. We will pick up some things on the way back, too.”
Durgen started to climb into the gig when Kasha stopped him.
“I am the pilot, remember?” she said with a grin.
“Sorry,” Durgen said. “Habit.”
Kasha slipped into the command chair. It felt good…right. She gripped the joystick that she’d use to control the gig. It fit perfectly in her paw.
So much seemed to be spinning into chaos and confusion. Her father’s recent behavior, her own new and unsettled ideas about gars. What was right and what was wrong. She could push all those distracting and disturbing questions aside as she put all her attention on commanding this small craft.
Kasha toggled the power switches as Durgen took the copilot’s seat. “Let me get in first,” he complained.
“I know how you like to keep to a schedule,” Kasha teased.
“Do not make me regret giving you this responsibility,” Durgen said.
Kasha sighed. Why did she have to prove herself at every turn, to show that she wouldn’t let people down? Coach Jorsa, Durgen, even Boon, and her own father. Didn’t they understand she pushed herself harder than anyone else could?
The overhead blades whined as they powered up. Kasha waited until Durgen was settled into the copilot chair and then grabbed the joystick between the two seats. She twisted it, and the gig raised off the platform and hovered a few inches above it.
“Are you comfortable?” Kasha asked Durgen in an overly solicitous tone. “May I please launch?”
“All right, all right,” Durgen growled, but this time with humor. “Yes, take off.”
Kasha turned another switch and the side rotors kicked in. The gig moved forward and Kasha gave it speed.
Kasha enjoyed feeling the surge of power as the gig launched into the air. The open cockpit allowed a strong breeze to carry the floral scent from the jungle to invigorate Kasha as she navigated the gig away from the launching area.
“So,” Kasha said over the drone of the rotating blades. “East?”
“Take the same route we flew last week, and then I will guide you from there.”
Kasha used the joystick to turn the gig, and pulled on the throttle to pick up speed. She would have loved to really put on the power, but knew that Durgen wouldn’t approve. Even though they were friends, he was also her supervisor.
She was glad she had pulled gig rotation today. She didn’t think she was up to facing tangs, or even riding on a zenzen or in a bumpy cart. She was feeling the bruises from yesterday’s intense wippen game.
“Careful up ahead,” Durgen warned. “You will need some height for the—”
“I see it,” Kasha replied. They were approaching the outskirts of the city. Trees were taller here, and beyond them, she remembered, were craggy mountains. She’d need to fly between crevices to go east. The gaps in the rock face weren’t all that easy to find.
The gig’s nose suddenly rose sharply, pressing Kasha and Durgen back into their seats. Kasha brought it level again, and they easily cleared the treetops.
“A slow climb is a preferable technique,” Durgen said.
“But this is more fun!” Kasha said. Actually, she had thought she was guiding the gig into a slow climb. It was harder to control than she’d realized.
“So, with the crevice…,” she said. She peered ahead trying to spot the entrance. All she could see was rock.
“I thought you knew all about piloting,” Durgen said with a smirk.
“I thought you would want to participate,” Kasha said. “I know how much you hate being bored. Besides,” she added, slowing down the gig, afraid she’d miss the entrance and crash into the boulders, “if the copilot does nothing, he’s just dead weight. Right?”
“Drop slightly,” Durgen instructed with a grin. “But be ready to go into fast turns. You’ll need to adjust the angles on the control panel.”
Kasha nodded. She was glad she wasn’t doing this run on her own. She vowed to put in more hours on gig duty. “Here’s the entrance,” Durgen said. “Get ready!”
Kasha peered ahead, knowing that she was going to have to use fast reflexes to do the subtle shifting maneuvers required to make it through the crevice. Her paw hovered over the control panel, ready to start the first of the quick turns.
Now!
She turned the control, then reached across the control board to grab the other. Her paw knocked the throttle and the gig suddenly lurched forward. She’d thrown the gig into high speed!
“Slow down!” Durgen cried.
“I can’t!” Kasha said. She couldn’t risk taking her paws off the controls or the joystick. She worked the switches and the gig responded instantly, shifting left and right, tilting, rounding sharp corners, all at a breakneck speed.
Kasha’s heart pounded hard in her furred chest. She sensed Durgen’s tension but pushed it out of her thoughts. All she could focus on was the next move. Otherwise the gig would crash into the side of the cliffs. She wasn’t going to let that happen.
Durgen must have known she needed every ounce of concentration. He didn’t say a word.
They burst out of the crevice on the other side of the mountain.
She’d made it!
She grabbed the throttle and pulled back to slow down. The gig smoothly coasted over a beautiful clearing.
“Well,” Durgen said shakily. “We certainly made this run in record time.”
Kasha nodded. She was too wound up to speak.
“That wippen game is doing wonders for your reflexes,” Durgen commented.
“I had just been thinking that yesterday,” Kasha said. “That foraging and playing wippen use a lot of the same skills.”
“There should be a foraging group around here,” Durgen said, peering at the landscape below. “They went out very early this morning.”
She gazed down at the landscape, trying to pick out the foragers in the fields. She had never harvested this far from Leeandra. It was unfamiliar terrain. Rocks loomed over the group, which was ringed on one side by boulders and a river on the other.
She watched the forage, fascinated by how it looked from the air. The klees stood around the cart, chatting. The gars worked hard, picking and hauling the crop. The klees barely paid attention to them, other than to occasionally jab them with sticks to make them move faster. She was surprised how small the group of klees looked, in among the towering stalks, surrounded by even larger trees. How could the gars be used as protection? she wondered. They looked so weak and defenseless.
“They’re almost done,” Durgen commented. “They’ll turn around soon.”
A flash of movement caught Kasha’s eye, and she looked over to see a tang leap down from a rock. Kasha gasped—she’d never even seen it coming! Its bright green body blended with the foliage.
“The tang!” Kasha cried as it crept up to the edge of the field. “They don’t know it’s there! We have to help them.”
She hit the controls and the gig tipped its nose down. Durgen placed his paw firmly over hers. “No,” he said. “They have to handle it on their own.”
“But—”
“This is a scouting assignment—we have no weapons,” Durgen reminded her.
“We must alert them!”
“The tang will attack the gars—that will certainly alert the klees!”
Kasha gaped at him, then looked away. What’s wrong with me? Gars had always been used as the first line of defense.
The tang made its move, leaping onto an unsuspecting gar. The gar let out an agonized howl, and just as Durgen predicted, this sent the klees into action. They quickly loaded what they could into the cart and took off.
Leaving the gars behind.
Kasha’s eyes widened. “They’re just abandoning them.”
Durgen looked at her, perplexed. “They have to get the harvest back. The gars will take care of themselves.”
“But—” Kasha stopped herself. Once again she was arguing against a practice she’d accepted all her life. Durgen would think she was crazy.
She shook her head. It’s all that talk of my father’s last night, she told herself.
She glanced down below again. The gars were racing away from the area, stumbling over one another, tripping in their haste over rocks, stumps. The tang stood, the captured gar still struggling under its talons on the ground, whimpering, screaming.
The terror of the gars reached all the way up to the gig, up into Kasha’s bones. She could feel it. Taste it. She’d felt that same fear herself during a tang attack, desperate to escape, frantic to save her colleagues, her friends.
She had never realized that the gars felt the same way. Of course, she knew they were afraid to die or to feel pain, but today she saw something different.
Today she saw the similarities between the gars and the klees.
Not possible. Ridiculous. That’s like saying just because my zenzen gets hungry or resists a command, it is just like me because I get hungry and disobey orders from Durgen. We are not the same. They are—
“You’re right,” she declared to Durgen. “There is nothing we can do for them. We should get on our way.”
“Travel northeast. I will let you know when it is time to change direction.”
“Got it.” Kasha adjusted the controls. She pulled back hard on the throttle and the gig rocketed away, the screams of the gar growing faint behind them.