22For a few precious weeks, it’s as though the war has ended. Not that we’re so foolish as to think the fighting stopped the moment we took ourselves out of it, but rather this place, like the lazaretto, seems almost to be removed from time—an island standing gloriously still though the river flows on around it. The war still lives, a constant presence in our hearts and minds, but held in a state of purposive suspension, like thoughts of the coming year in the last days of a summer idyll before school begins anew.
School. Less than two months ago, it was the main focus of our lives. Now I wonder if any of us will ever set foot in one again.
The idea that I might not doesn’t bother me the way it should. My purpose is not there, though I never knew it until I left. Those relentless days spent chafing at my desk were merely a precursor, a holding pattern freezing me in place until all the pieces of my destiny could be laid. And just like those classroom days, so too is this time in the forest merely a setup for what’s to come—the unblinking eye at the center of a storm that will only rage harder ere it ends.
Maybe that’s why this time feels different. Though once again I find myself caught in an indefinite waiting game, I don’t feel that simmering discontent that dogged me in the days, weeks, and months following Lia’s death. Like a festering sore sunk deep in my heart, it infected everything I said, everything I did, everything I was. Not anymore. Out here, my lungs breathe without catching and my heart beats without handicap. Out here, I’ve found a contentment unlike any I’ve felt in my entire life. Ironic, isn’t it? Only with the coming of war did I finally find peace.
It’s a peace that won’t last. A peace whose very transience is what confers upon it its value. Even now, the storm is moving, shifting imperceptibly around us though our position blinds us to its passage. At any moment, we could find ourselves spat from its eye and thrown deep into its ravages once more. I should be scared, and in some small part I suppose I am, but fear is for the unprepared, and I intend to be anything but when the winds finally shift and the tempest pours over us once again.
Four weeks after setting up camp, we make our third raid. Unlike the previous raids, this one isn’t on an emergency shelter but on a small store located on the outskirts of Settlement 1. As the journey there is a long one—nearly twelve klicks through thick jungle—I bring only a small team, hand-picked for their strength and stamina: Jovan, Trey, and Kieran, plus Hegit to handle any electronic security. Though not as good a hacker as Mercury, she’s in far better shape, having played a number of sports back at the academy.
Compared to the journey there, the raid itself is laughably short. We’re in and out within ten minutes, grabbing what we need before fleeing like ghosts in the night, packs of essentials stashed safely on our backs. It’s late, and aside from the faintest hint of ghoul off in the distance, we encounter no one. The only sour note comes at the end of the raid, when I emerge from the depot to discover that Jovan, our designated sentry, got tired of standing guard and left his post to bag a few items of his own while he waited.
I’m furious, a fact which I make free to tell Jovan once we’re safely away, pulling him aside from the other three before lighting into him.
He only smirks. “So what are you going to do about it?”
My hand tightens on my stunner, and I remind myself that the satisfaction of shooting Jovan would be nullified by having to drag his heavy ass the eleven klicks back to camp.
It’s mid-morning by the time we arrive home, guided by the night vision in our lenses and the homing chits I stuck into the trees on our way out. Though I’m dog-tired after a night spent hiking through the forest, I have new acquisitions to hand out before I can even think about hitting the sack. From the looks of it, Jovan and Trey decided to start without me. They ran on ahead during the final klick, and now they’re handing out the stuff they grabbed in the raid to an adoring crowd. From their puffed-up chests and triumphant demeanors, you’d think they’d planned and executed the foray all on their own. A few items that were definitely not on the list exchange hands, and I realize from the winks and nods that Jovan deliberately shirked guard duty in order to curry favor with the others.
Figures. When we were stranded in the forest, starving and pursued by Specs, he was willing to let me take charge, but now that we’re set up safe and sound in our own little camp, he wants to be king again. Not that I’m surprised. This little stunt is only the latest in what’s become a disturbing trend. Over the past couple of weeks, he’s done any number of small things—shirking chores, badmouthing me behind my back—to show that while the others may have accepted my leadership, he hasn’t. The question is: What am I going to do about it?
No immediate answer coming to mind, I put the problem on the back burner for later and join the group. Though we mostly grabbed consumables, like food and medicine, we also managed to nab two additional tents. A cheer goes up when we produce the shelters, everyone excited at the prospect of easing what have been admittedly tight quarters. We pass one to the boys and one to the girls, and soon the debates over who’s staying and who’s moving begin.
Rather than wade into the rat race, I make my way over to the kitchen area. Crates of food protected by a mobile enviro-shield generator sit at the foot of a massive Iona tree. A few cartons have been pushed together to form a makeshift counter. I nod to Zane, who perches on a root behind the cartons, tending a small camping stove.
Grabbing a soap pellet from a canister tucked into a notch in the trunk, I wash my hands and face in a bowl-shaped terraline leaf filled with rainwater.
“Coffee?”
Zane holds out a travel mug, already filled and capped. With a grateful smile, I take it, downing half the cup in one gulp. The hot liquid hits me with a sweet rush, and I sigh. Sugar and caffeine—exactly what I needed.
While Zane grabs me a breakfast bar, I lean against the crate and watch the others. The debates still rage, though judging from the way Hegit is gesticulating at Amilee, Dani, Megumi, and herself, I have a feeling the girls’ is about to be settled. The guys are still hotly arguing the matter, with a bit of wrestling thrown in for good measure. Strangely enough, the two people I expected to be most vocal about the matter are silent. Vida and Jovan are standing off to the side of the group, quietly speaking while the others debate. I eye them curiously, wondering what they could possibly have to talk about that’s more important than rooming arrangements.
“So how did the raid go? You get everything you were looking for?” Zane asks me with a nod to my now-empty pack. He offers me a breakfast bar—strawberry oatmeal, my favorite—and unwrapping it, I take a few bites.
“It went fine,” I answer after a second. “In and out, exactly like I planned.” My voice hitches slightly as I catch sight of Jovan pulling one last item out of his bag, an item that was definitely not on the list.
A two-person tent.
Son of a . . . ! My brows crease in a frown, an answer to the scowl already settling over my lips. Zane follows the direction of my gaze and raises an eyebrow. “Problems?”
I hesitate, staring at the tent a moment longer before answering, “Not problems, exactly. Complications.”
He raises an eyebrow at that, and it’s all I can do not to snort at my own understatement. While I couldn’t care less if V and J frag till kingdom come, that private tent is going to be trouble, I just know it. If I’d known Jovan had grabbed that thing, I really would have stunned him while I had the chance!
I scan the others, looking to see if anyone else objects to Jovan’s love nest, but everyone else is too busy with the new shelters to notice or care. Everybody except one.
Djen.
She stands alone, eyes burning with pure resentment as she watches the couple set up their new digs slightly away from the other shelters. Her lips tremble, and despite the fury in her eyes, I have the feeling she’s going to burst into tears any minute.
Slag. The smart thing to do would be to confiscate the tent—commandeer it for supplies or some such—but if I know Jovan, he’ll fight tooth and nail to keep it. It’s a fight I can’t win, at least not now, with Jovan’s popularity running high and everyone else too happy with the new accommodations to care. For now, I’ll have to wait and watch and hope my presentiment ends up being wrong.
Downing the last of my coffee, I turn back to Zane for a refill, only to catch him staring at me. “What?”
He ducks his head and quickly looks away. “Nothing.”
“Did something happen while I was gone? Did Vida—”
“No, no. Nothing like that,” he rushes to reassure me, taking the cup and refilling it. He adds two creams and three sugars, exactly the way I like it, and hands it back with a sideways glance. “It’s just that while you were away, Kieran and I took a little trip through the woods north of camp—just scouting, seeing what’s around . . .”
“And?”
He leans in and lowers his voice slightly. “We found something.”
My heart skips a beat. Despite my exhaustion, I suddenly feel wide awake. “Show me.”
The crater stretches out in either direction as far as I can see, yawning across the forest floor like a great maw ready to swallow the planet whole.
I let out a low whistle. This thing is huge—a few hundred meters across at least—with mounds of displaced dirt piled up around the pit in irregular heaps. A metal spheroid, its silver carapace blackened and battered, lists off to the side in the deepest part of the abyss, partially buried under a mass of rubble. In person, it’s even bigger than I imagined from Zane’s description, nearly my height, with the letters ctc etched across the side in strokes as long as my arm.
CTC. Celestial Terraforming Corporation.
I take a quick glance around the area. Everything was crushed in its flight to Iolanthe. Seared foliage and woody detritus litter the crater from end to end, and sizeable chunks have been carved from the massive boles surrounding it on either side. A blackened mass of feathers lies just inside the opening, stinking and charred.
I stroll through the crater, careful to avoid the worst of the debris, and scan my chit hand over the wreckage. One eyebrow rises in surprise as its identity pops up on my hand. “It’s a weather equalizer.”
“From the early days of terraforming?” Hegit asks with a yawn. I grabbed her on our way out for her technical expertise, but from the looks of it, she’s too tired to contribute much. She yawns again. “Aren’t those supposed to be, you know, up in the sky?”
“It must have fallen,” Zane says, the matter-of-fact answer completely at odds with the disbelief in his tone. It’s a feeling I currently share—an inability to refute the facts before me, though logic tells me those same facts make absolutely no sense.
With an assessing eye to the rough terrain, I walk in a careful circle around the equalizer. From up close, I can see that the device survived its fall from grace with aplomb. Though cracks split through the carapace in a dozen directions from the point of impact, the metallic spheroid is still mostly intact, a testament to the sheer durability of the machine. Not that I’m entirely surprised. Weather equalizers are some of the toughest pieces of terraforming equipment in the Expanse. They have to be in order to survive the constant atmospheric stresses placed on them for years on end. They’re specifically made to take the punishment. For one of them to simply fall . . .
I crouch down next to the wreckage and cautiously put one hand on the carapace. “Weather equalizers don’t just tumble out of the sky for no reason. They have safeguards against that. Something made it fall.”
As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, Zane shakes his head. “This thing could have come down months, or even years ago. There’s no reason to think its fall has anything to do with us, or what’s currently happening on Iolanthe. For all we know, it fell long before the war ever started.”
Hand still on the shell, I glance up at him. “It would be completely overgrown by now if it had, and besides—” I tap my fingers lightly on the carapace. “It’s still warm.”
“Warm?”
“Power source is still running,” I explain. “This isn’t from years, or even months ago. This thing fell recently.”
Rising to my feet, I step back from the equalizer and glance around the crater. Despite the initial decimation, already the forest is beginning to grow back. Shrubs, vines, and small saplings abound throughout the crater, clearly having a growth heyday without the taller trees to block their sun, and even the equalizer itself is half overgrown by various plants that have rooted themselves into grooves in the carapace. I try to estimate how long ago it fell. Four, maybe five weeks? Iolanthe’s flora has been growing more aggressively than ever; any longer than that, and the creeping vines crawling across the carapace would be a blanket by now. It’s as good a guess as any; still, I wonder if there’s a way to get a more exact figure.
By some miracle, the access panel ended up—mostly—on the exposed half of the equalizer. I kneel next to the panel and scrabble at the rubble, using both hands to scoop away the leaves and dirt until I’ve revealed the rest of the panel. It’s dented and dinged, courtesy of its rocky trip through the canopy, and all conventional attempts to open it fail. Only when I slip the tip of my hunting knife under one of the dings do I manage to pry it open with a satisfying pop.
My terraformer access gets me in, but the control interface that confronts me is so generic as to be completely unusable by anyone who doesn’t know the exact codes and commands required to operate the equalizer. I glance at Hegit, but unsurprisingly, she shakes her head.
“You’d have better luck pulling the flight recorder and linking to it directly than using that thing,” she says with a shrug.
“How long would it take to pull the recorder?”
“Minutes, hours, maybe even days—I don’t know. It’s impossible to tell just by looking at it.”
Her face falls, and while I know she would try for the recorder if I asked, I can tell she’s really hoping I won’t.
I hesitate as I consider the device. The information inside that flight recorder could be important. What if the Specs did, in fact, have something to do with its fall? That said, we’re all exhausted after the raid. The last thing anyone wants is to spend hours digging for a recorder that might do nothing more than confirm that the equalizer fell due to mechanical failure. And despite my desire for answers, even I’m loath to stay here any longer. Maybe . . .
I chew on my lip, hardly able to believe I’m considering this.
. . . . but just maybe, it would be better to let this one go.
“It’s not like it’s going anywhere, right?” I say lightly, dusting off my knees as I rise to my feet. “We can always come back later if we need to.”
Hegit’s face immediately lightens, and even Zane seems relieved to learn that we’re not going to pursue this any further, at least not yet. My lighthearted response aside, my intuition tells me this equalizer is more than just a piece of ancient tech gone bad. I only hope I’m not making a mistake by letting it go.