Fourteen

Looking at the deep forest on Altaira, Kayana tried to remember the last time she’d seen so many shades of green in one place. Maybe never. Deathtrap or no, you couldn’t deny that it was beautiful. Leaves of every shade formed a thick canopy above trunks covered with lichen. Beneath those, shrubs and undergrowth added in even more emerald hues. Anything that had lain still for too long was draped with a carpet of gorgeous gray-green hanging moss. Wet air and shade kept the temperature cool, but not so cold as to be uncomfortable.

She could understand why Octiron had cut a deal with the planet’s colonization board. The view in every direction was stupendous.

“So,” said Ax as he walked up beside her. “Will death come from below or above, do you think?”

“Ugh, when did you become such a pessimist?” She wrapped her arm around his waist and tugged him closer. She wasn’t cold, but being next to him just felt reassuring. The tension between them hadn’t completely evaporated, but she did believe he understood why she’d been upset.

“Age ten. I didn’t get a pony for my birthday, and it was all downhill from there.” He hip-checked her with a grin. “Besides, why are you an optimist?”

“Pirate,” she reminded him. “The next ship is always going to be the one haul that lets you retire in style on your own private moon somewhere.” Despite herself, she’d had that thought more than once in the last week. If they managed to win this thing, she’d ostensibly have enough to do whatever she wanted. With whomever she wanted.

There were good reasons to be happy the race was coming to an end. The idea of never seeing her family again, of never watching the twin suns of G’henna paint the seas red, ached like a phantom limb. The idea of leaving Ax behind after it was all said and done was beginning to hurt almost as much.

Kayana chewed her lip and let out a slow breath. They’d agreed, no secrets, but now wasn’t the time to drag out a conversation about whether or not he’d be willing to change his post-race plans for her. “So,” she said at last. “Which way does the tracker say we should go?”

Ax had hung the device around his neck so he couldn’t drop it accidentally. He caught it up with one hand and checked the readout before pointing in a direction. “Apparently, it’s off that way. I’m getting a ton of interference though. Not sure if it’s the growth that’s causing it or something underneath it all.” He pried up a bit of moss from the forest floor with the toe of his boot as though expecting something horrific to jump out at him.

Nothing did. She resisted the urge to sigh aloud and glanced back to make certain that the holovid drone was still following them. As promised, Berniss had remained in the ship, safely locked away, probably with Fluff on her lap and plenty of fresh coffee. The reporter’s humming, yellow extension was inescapable however.

Kayana waved at the camera and gave a thumbs-up for the eventual audience. “Even if Octiron set this whole thing up to kill us—which I doubt—there wouldn’t be any sport in beaming us directly into the trap. It wastes a great setup. The ratings are going to be much higher if it looks like we have a chance, and then we die horribly.” She gave him a toothy smile.

“I don’t know which disturbs me more—that your explanation actually makes sense or that you sound like you approve.” He shook his head before heading off in a direction almost thirty degrees off from the way he’d pointed. “I’d hate to disappoint our bloodthirsty fans, I suppose.”

“I thought the gemstone was off in that direction,” she said. Algol had described it as a hefty, faceted tsavorite called the Forest’s Soul. Kayana had to admit, the fancy names for the gemstones were starting to appeal to her. At first, she’d thought them superfluous, but when she looked at them after the fact, the names summoned back the memory of each challenge. Each time she and Ax had overcome as a team. The Gambler’s Luck still held a lot of pain in its bright blue surface, but it had been easy enough to ignore.

“Assuming the interference isn’t throwing the scanner off, sure. But if we head straight for it, we end up walking directly into whatever they have planned.”

“But if we go too far afield, the problems might be even worse,” Kayana replied. The AI had given them a briefing similar to the story that Berniss had shared—that Altaira had been a point of contention between two warring civilizations centuries before. “We might end up missing whatever Octiron planted to harass us with, and stumble into some untriggered trap or ordnance instead.”

He paused for several seconds before checking the tracker and starting off in yet another direction. “Good point,” he conceded. “How about we split the difference? If we can skirt just close enough to the direction Octiron expects us to go, we might be able to avoid the traps they set and catch whatever the deathtrap equivalent of an access road is.”

Kayana mulled over the idea. It wasn’t unsound, actually—the traps the company set would need to be maintained, ideally without disturbing them. Up ahead, Ax continued past the edge of a small clearing and took the first few steps into the under-canopy. She called after him, “What if it’s creatures instead?”

“Never happen,” he said as he turned back to face her. “The whole point of the challenges is to vary them up. It hasn’t said as much, but you can be damn sure Algol is manipulating the displayed challenges. I know there were some I saw at the start which aren’t there now. I suspect the corporation wants each team to face different challenges to keep things interesting for the audience. After all, who wants to see the same thing again and again? We faced animals back on Caldera. It makes sense that they wouldn’t throw them at us a second time.”

The thought of the first planetary challenge brought a warm blush to her face. She doubted they’d be so lucky as to have another cave they could hide in together. Although some of the trees were pretty large. There might be space under the roots that was like a cave...

A sharp metallic sound snapped her out of her reverie, and she scanned the edge of the clearing, trying to find the source. A flock of dark-winged animals leapt from the canopy to spiral into the sky in alarm, but nothing else moved. Whatever it had been, it came and went in less than an eyeblink and left no sign of its passing.

It took almost two heartbeats for her to realize that Ax had disappeared.

#

NOTHING’S BROKEN, Ax thought. That makes things better than they could be.

And Kayana said he wasn’t optimistic. He lifted the remains of the tracker and tried to focus on it in the gloom of the pit. “Correction,” he whispered. “No bones broken.” With a little more space, he might be able to jury-rig something with what remained of the tracker, but it would be tricky. The screen had gone dark, an irregular crack splitting the display from top to bottom. He could feel a small panel on the back, but without enough light to use his toolkit he had as much chance of fixing it as he had flying out of the trap itself.

He took stock of where he’d landed. Tiny blue lights just above head level gave a dim illumination to the etched metal walls of a cylindrical tube. Eight feet above, a featureless steel circle served as the trapdoor entrance through which he’d come. He tried not to think of the myriad negative reasons the original colonists would have built a pit trap. Whatever the company had planned, that didn’t mean there weren’t large predators that needed trapping. He didn’t see any way to climb back out, which made sense after all. You didn’t provide victims with a means to release themselves.

Ax did some quick math to calculate how much air would be available in the tube, assuming it was a tight seal. It couldn’t be much. A few hours at most.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The sound of wood on metal drifted down from above. He shouted, voice echoing off the walls like a sounding chamber. It was too fast for anyone other than Kayana to have arrived. At least he hoped so. If it was whoever had built the trap, well, suffocation was a better option. Three more taps, directly in the center of the door.

“Yes!” he shouted. “Down here. Can you get the door open? Is there is a catch somewhere?”

Light and sound suddenly streamed into the tube from above. Kayana’s head appeared silhouetted against the circular opening as she managed to push the trapdoor open. “This is me not saying I told you so.”

“I’m glad,” Relief flooded him, almost enough to not rise to her bait. “Because you’d have to be a real asshole to say I told you so before getting me out.”

“And lose my captive audience?” She laughed, teeth flashing in the light. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Ax made an elaborate show of extending his middle finger for her.

She only grinned wider. “Later. If you are very good.”

He growled. If she wasn’t an actual devil, he decided, she’d certainly done some interning in one of the hells. Her ability to embody temptation and torture at the same time was almost irresistible. “Can you just grab a rope or some vines or something and get me out of here?”

“Certainly.” After a few moments finagling, she wedged a small stick into the hinge to hold the trapdoor open before she disappeared again. At least he wouldn’t suffocate. Though he might be smothered by her smug attitude before the day was out. And that was before she’d seen the tracker. He had until she’d gotten him out of the trap to rig a solution, because if he didn’t undo the damage? The woman would be bloody insufferable.

With sunlight streaming in, it was easier to remove the back panel of the device. The paucity of wires inside told him exactly what he’d suspected. He could activate the audible mode separate from the screen with a quick bypass. He stripped the wires, arms folded against his chest in the tight space of the tube. With the small arc-solder from his kit he locked the two wires to their new home. It was messy, but with a bit of luck it should work. He replaced the back panel and waved the device above his head. After a second, it rewarded him with a solid ping.

“So, what do I get if I help you out?” Kayana reappeared and showed off the coil of vines she had in one hand.

“Frustrated, I suspect.” He stretched a hand up to take the vines, but she pulled them out of his reach.

“That doesn’t seem like much of an incentive.”

“I’d ask if you want me to beg, but I think we both know how you like your men.” Kayana chuckled, but didn’t lower the vines for him, so he continued. “Fine. You can have another ten percent of the winnings. Or twenty. Just leave me enough to cover my debts.” If he could repay Gobby’s financial losses, she might not have him killed. It was a big might, but it was also the best shot he had left.

Her eyes hardened, and he immediately knew it had been the wrong thing to say. After a moment’s pause, she said, “Yeah. Money works too.” He could hear the disappointment in her voice, but didn’t know how to fix it. There was no taking back the what he’d said, which hung in the air between them like a fart in a spacesuit.

She tossed one end of the vine down to him without another word, and helped pull him back to the surface. Ax resisted the urge to kiss the ground once he reached the top. The last thing he wanted was to set off another trap and go in headfirst. He doubted she’d let him live down a second incident. He brushed off the legs of his exo-suit as she watched. “Thanks, I owe you.”

“So you said.” For a woman who could control flames, her tone couldn’t be more cold.

He didn’t have the energy to deal with her bruised feelings. He barely had room for his own. After a moment, he took a deep breath and held out the tracker. “We lost the screen, but I’ve patched together a solution. Hopefully we won’t need it again after this trip, but if so, I can make a more thorough repair back on the ship.”

She turned it over, nodding appreciatively. “It’s a clever bypass. What was down there?”

“Nothing at all. That’s what bothers me. You don’t create cells for no reason. Which means this area’s either crawling with them, or they’re hiding places and the area contains something far worse.” He scanned the woods, not liking the way things had suddenly grown quiet. “We should go.”

She’d noticed too. He could tell, the way the pointed tip of her ear twitched slightly. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

Despite the cool air, he could feel the sweat on his back, which did little to build confidence. Sweeping the tracker, Ax got another solid ping from the stone’s location and started out at a trot. With luck, there wouldn’t be another trapdoor for him to fall through. Or her.

The underbrush tangled around them, doing everything in its power to keep them from advancing. After ten minutes of struggle, Kayana stopped. With a flick of her hand, she activated the glove he’d given her, and as he watched the spark grew into a short rope of flame, blue white at its center.

She snapped her wrist, and the flame slashed through the underbrush. Each crack opened the path a little farther, creating a space for them to walk without hindrance.

Part of him was pleased that she still used his gift. The rest of him was in awe of her ability. “That beats the hell out of a machete.”

She eyed him, the hurt still apparent though it had softened some at his compliment. Again and again, he kept saying or doing the wrong things. He ached to reach out, to touch her shoulder and try to take back the damage he’d done. Any healing would still leave a scar though; until he had a time machine there was no way to undo the error for real.

After a deep sigh, she gave him a smile laced with sadness. “It’s a simple shape. It’s no good as a weapon, except maybe against plants. They don’t move ar—”

The ground shifted, cutting her off mid-word. Ax braced himself against a tree, while with an enormous groan of metal, what looked like half the forest floor stood up.