“Then, by all means, we leave now,” I say, heading to my room to gather my things.
Grey stands up. “No way are you going Amy. You’re our only asset.”
“Hell to you Grey. I’m going or I’m walking toward the dead people to get my daughter back.”
We’ve decided that Gorian, Iggy, English, Bets, and Theo will fly with me in the shuttle. Etch, Samuel, Grey, Minns, and the children of Iggy will remain at camp to await our return and look out for shuffling dead people.
The shuttle’s tucked in the rear of the Fuerst, looking a lot like the winged boxes I saw crashing into buildings in Troll’s moving pictures of the great fall. This memory gives me pause as I walk into its gaping door. Could it be possible that Iggy will lose control of the machine to the Trolls out there?
The interior of the shuttle is dark, illuminated by blue, green, red, and yellow lights. We’re cramped in the back while Iggy and Gorian sit in chairs in the front, pressing buttons and murmuring to each other. I freeze at the voice in the space. “Please prepare for departure. Stay seated.” It sounds identical to Troll.
“We need to leave,” I shout. English and Bets react similarly, jumping and standing at the door.
Theo laughs. “Calm down you three. This isn’t Troll, is it Gorian?”
“If you mean the HM interface you encountered at the munitions storage, nope. This is just the HM for the shuttle. It must have a similar voice synthesizer.”
“Thank the gods,” Bets sighs sitting down.
The shuttle floats out of the Fuerst and ascends into the sky. I feel the same lightness I did soaring in the magpie. Theo, Bets, and English stare out of the portholes in amazement. For a moment, a glimpse of a young girl passes Bets’ face. It suits her.
The ocean is so impossibly large from this vantage. Crests of waves wink at me. The water knows whom I am and what I need to do. Iggy banks the shuttle and the ocean recedes as the mountains beckon in the distance. The cabin’s silent, with the exception of an occasional wet sneeze from Iggy.
“Catch a cold in the ocean?” Gorian hands him a wipe.
“I seem to have contracted a virus. Perhaps it was the stress of reproducing. I’ll revive soon, although a good torpor would do me good.”
Gorian laughs. The rest of us haven’t a clue what the frog man or woman is talking about. Gorian catches her breath and says, “So, my friends, I have some things to tell you about Melat before we approach the Raven, if it is really there. First, Melat was one of the best pilots I’ve known. She changed after we had an accident dropping from one location of space to another. We think she was influenced by the powers in the government to abort our mission. Or something unknown got to her in infraspace. Regardless, she found out about the portal on Planet C9 and she blew it up. We barely escaped. Oh, infraspace is the place in between space and time. It’s impossible to explain without math.”
Bets makes the connection, even given Gorian’s gobblygook language. “Should we be concerned that this Melat woman is here to do the same thing to earth, drag it into that infra … space, portal and all?”
Iggy wheezes. “Perceptive Bets. This thought has crossed our minds. Of course, Etch could not sense her, so perhaps she’s dead or incapacitated. It’s better for us to assume she’s alive, just in case.”
“Great news.” Theo’s flushed. “We’ve got Thresh sending dead ones to us and killing innocents and now you tell us we got to deal with doomsday? We had peaceful lives and now all this. You’re all bringing the horrors of the ancient ones with you.”
Gorian shrugs. “Seems to be the way of things, don’t you think? Didn’t you want things to be better? Not get sick so much? Have more comfort? Keep a constant supply of your beloved tobacco? Keep your loved ones around longer? That’s what makes all this happen. People want more and more. And it just gets more complicated.”
English is strangely sober. “The portal. It’s a test for us, isn’t it?”
“Who’s giving the test?” Iggy asks in his machine voice.
“I dunno. Like, a temptation to us. We need to decide what we want to use that portal for.”
Gorian turns in her chair. “Are you suggesting that someone has a plan for us? Like a god?”
English responds, “Sure. Don’t ya believe in gods? There’s more to all this, do you not think?”
“Oh English. We’ve seen things that we can’t explain. But that doesn’t mean there’s no explanation. I don’t believe that any of this is predetermined. And no, there are no gods. Only other beings like us.”
English retreats to silence and stares out the window.
Theo plops down next to me. “How’s it going Sprouter?”
“We were living a simple life and then — all this. I want my family back Theo.”
“We’ll get them back. I miss them too.”
He touches my hand and Bets glares.
“What if we don’t?”
“Then I’ll always be with you.” Theo gazes a bit too long at me — I feel a warmth in my gut that I can’t suppress. I pull my hand away.
“We’re approaching. Iggy slow it down and descend.” Gorian dims the lights in the cabin, while the shuttle hums lightly. She turns to us. “That sound’s coming from a protective field. If the Raven’s passively listening for us, then it won’t detect us.”
Iggy clarifies, “It’ll make us invisible to Melat. We hope.”
The shuttle gently glides into a thick forest of pine trees. Iggy expertly weaves it in between the boughs. I can sense the age of the forest and the creatures inhabiting it. I expect to see the green ones hanging from the limbs, waving at me. The shuttle slows to a crawl and sinks into a glade of thick weeds. The landing’s so soft that I don’t notice it.
“The Raven’s about a thousand meters straight ahead through this meadow,” Gorian announces. “We need to weapon up.” She and Iggy pull out a series of shelves brimming with guns and other implements. Iggy hands each of us a light blue gun with a short barrel.
“This looks like a toy. I like the colors.” Bets points it toward the front of the vessel.
Iggy jumps and forces the barrel down. “Careful. This thing can destroy the helm. There’d be no way for us to get back without it.”
We gather outside the shuttle, where Gorian stands holding what looks like a dragonfly in her hand. A closer look reveals that the object in her palm’s a machine. It leaps out of her hand and hovers above us. “Do you like my little drone? It’ll give us a look ahead.” Gorian adorns a pair of odd-looking glasses. “These let me see through its eyes.”
“I can do that with magpies,” I mutter.
As we struggle through the dry grass, I notice that the air’s strangely still and cold, even for this time of year at this elevation. I can tell Bets feels the same way — she’s alert, looking intently into the dead vegetation. She’s expecting something to jump out, like a mountain lion or perhaps a grub. Gorian seems less concerned, paying more attention to the view in her glasses than the immediate dangers lurking in the brush.
“We’re approaching a ridge,” Gorian says. Within moments, the ground drops off and we’re facing a vast open space with the mountains impossibly close. At the bottom of the valley is the queerest thing I’ve seen yet. Even Iggy gasps in his alien voice. The same ship we saw emerge from Gorian’s tablet earlier is lying in the trickle of a wide stream bed. It’s impossibly large and dark as night. And only half of it is there.
“What the—” Gorian exclaims. A flash of bright light, like lightning, but green rather than blue-white, assaults us.
The area where the back of the ship should be is hazy and crackling. Flashes of emerald light spark from nowhere. The stream disappears into the haze and doesn’t reemerge — the bed is completely dry downstream of the ship.