"It only has the appearance of doors," she said, after a long pause. "As the scans suggested, the stone has been fashioned as a solid panel. The aether–" She paused. "It appears to be maintaining the structure. If we damaged it, it is very likely it would reform."
Dropping her hand, she stepped away, being all super-professional. But when Ruuel nodded she relaxed a little, relieved and pleased. It’s so interesting how the squads react to their captains. These are people that they’ve grown up with, known almost all their lives, and probably competed with for the captaincy. But Fourth Squad, even Glade, who really doesn’t seem the type, act like Ruuel’s approval is tremendously important to them. Third Squad’s the same with Taarel. It’s a combination of respect and trust, I guess. I found out today that Fourth also treat Ruuel much as First Squad does Maze.
Once Halla had stepped back, Ruuel moved forward, making his gloves go away. It made me think of what he looked like this morning – such a long time ago now – and I had to work to not be too distracted by the memory of bare shoulders and neck. I really don’t ever see most of the Setari in anything but all-covering uniforms, so it seems like a lot more than I guess it really was: nothing compared to Lohn walking in on me. Like Halla, Ruuel closed his eyes, then carefully touched the tips of his fingers to the stone and I was looking at the length of his lashes and wondering if he plucked his eyebrows when I realised that he was slowly going white.
I looked from his face to his squad’s, and found them all with variations of the same worried expression. Tsur Selkie was more evaluating, but he was also watching Ruuel’s face with a hint of tension, as if he was ready to step forward and catch someone about to faint. Which Ruuel didn’t do, just opening his eyes again. But there were beads of sweat on his forehead, and he looked like he’d taken a fist to the stomach and refused to admit it.
"They were trying to escape," he said, voice steady in a way which took effort. "It sealed, and they could not open it."
He stepped away, recovering enough to shut down into a professional mask, and Tsur Selkie moved forward without comment, doing little more than to confirm Halla’s evaluation of the door with an addendum that he suspected the seal extended at least to the corridor beyond and possibly through the entire complex.
First Squad is quietly protective of Maze. And Fourth Squad’s the same about Ruuel. They spent the rest of the day pretending they weren’t keeping a watchful eye on him. And Ruuel spent the day looking distracted, still caught up in whatever he’d seen or felt about the last moments of the people sealed inside. Not so bad that Selkie took him off duty, but a visible difference to his usual observant and distant air.
The whole thing made me think a lot of Zan, too. Does anyone in her squad respect her? Want to protect her? That prompted me to write a long email to her talking about the things we’d been doing on the mission. The satellite isn’t positioned to directly connect us to Pandora, but she’ll have it already if she’s still there, or will with the next ship if she’s back on Tare. I hope she’s okay.
The rest of the day was filled with even longer doses of dull. The Setari tried to open the seal using Ena manipulation, without any effect, and even had me try. Glade whispered to me afterwards that it was very tactless of me to look so glad I failed. And now they’re bringing some equipment in to try and set up a field to interrupt the flow of aether, or drain it off. They really don’t want to smash their way in, or do anything by force.
Still, the horde of archaeologists are cleaning up the central area very nicely.
Thursday, April 10
Kolarens and crypts
I do wonder where the Tarens get all these tents. Their own planet is totally unsuited to tents as a form of accommodation: too incredibly windy. I suppose they might use tents inside the few caves they haven’t filled with whitestone. Whatever they usually use them for, they certainly have a lot of them. By sunset yesterday, the greensuits had constructed a little canvas city around the outer slope of the northern mountain. Currently the mountains are being referred to (in Taren) as North, South and East, even though I think they’ve been given more official names. North is the mountain on the Nurioth side, and East is the one furthest from the lake. The south mountain has the equipment and finds tents at its base, though the main finds so far have been the fragmentary remains of two skeletons which turned up under the tumble of whitestone in the centre of the circular paths.
Because of the wait for the Litara to return with the equipment to try on the seals, the central circle’s been getting a lot of attention and is looking increasingly bare – great patches of raw earth and freshly cleaned pathway. It’s not a bulls-eye pattern, but a more complex set of part-circles and radial lines, and I think it would make a nice garden. The greysuits are talking about trying to reconstruct the central structure.
I spent the morning doing school work, since Fourth Squad had left right after breakfast to map out all the nearby gates. They found some buildings, too, off under the trees a ways down south, which the greysuits are hoping are related to this site. Ninth Squad is stuck with the more boring guard duty, broken into pairs assigned to different shifts, since the Ddura seems to have taken care of any active threats in the area. With so many people here, I decided to stay out of the way and found myself a natural seat on a big stony shelf overlooking the mess tent. It was an unusually warm day compared to recent temperatures, nice and sunny.
Having grown a little more used to how long it takes the greysuits to do anything, my only reaction to the Litara arriving with the new equipment was to access the latest news feeds: little parcels of the latest public infocasts collected each time one of the ships returns to Tare. There’s a ton in them about Muina, of course, but very little of depth, and I was more interested in whether the Ionoth incursions back on Tare had gone back to normal levels. The Setari have re-established most of their rotations, and the only story I could find was about long-term upward trends.
When I was first given access, I used to close my eyes when using the interface. Now I’m more able to watch and see the world around me at the same time, but I by no means pay attention to my surroundings. And thus I was very confused by sudden movement right next to me and the soft sound of an impact. Suspending the news feed, I saw a couple of people standing over me, wearing a dark green and black uniform. My brain sluggishly caught up to what my eyes had recorded, and I realised one of them had tried to kick me and another had stepped in the way, catching her foot.
"Don’t start this, Katzyen," said the catcher, a guy who sounded more resigned than annoyed. "It’s not what we’re here for." I found it very hard to understand what he was saying, but didn’t immediately realise they were talking in a different dialect.
"If they’d had their way we wouldn’t be here at all." The second speaker was a small woman with sparking-hot green eyes, whose temper seemed set to nuclear smoulder. "Wouldn’t you say it’s only in the spirit of our alliance to test their level of combat training?" She shot a disparaging glance at me. "If you’re an example of the standard we’re constantly tested against, there’s nothing to Taren Setari except their reputation. Can you prove yourself the better?"