Adura continued to escort her a few minutes more before drawing their time to a close, apologizing and citing her need to attend to other duties. They returned to Elyth’s quarters, and the commander extracted herself from the conversation politely and with warmth. But Elyth saw through the veneer. The initial openness Adura had felt toward her had faded, and with it vanished the subtle influence Elyth had exerted over the woman.
After Adura had departed, Elyth checked the device above the door. As anticipated, someone indeed accessed the cabin while she’d been away. All her gear remained secure, and apart from the indication of her device, there were no apparent signs of intrusion. But knowing the troopers of 3 Recon were on board made that no surprise.
As she returned to her work, she couldn’t help but shake her head at the dance taking place even now between the Hezra and the First House. “A gentle poke” indeed. Undoubtedly, the Paragon had known more about the Helegoss than she’d let on; communication channels on both sides were probably stirred up. And the Advocates of the Eye were most assuredly at work soaking up the information.
Elyth guessed she had played her role aboard the vessel without knowing what that role had been meant to be. But having satisfied the itch in her mind over the vessel’s aspect drive, she completed her planning and then turned to a final check of her gear. She lingered over the task, part due diligence, part ritual. Each tool in her arsenal she inspected and verified for function and then secured in its particular place. Her supplies she reviewed for quantity, carefully recalculating how long they would last her. Ten standard days in the field would be manageable; more would be possible, if circumstance demanded. It wasn’t her plan to stay out that long, nor did she relish the idea, but the kinds of operations she conducted required loose plans and a flexible mind-set.
Elyth scanned her cabin. All was as she had left it. At that point, not knowing what her first hours on-planet would bring, or perhaps knowing just enough, she decided to sleep while she could. She laid down on the bottom bunk, fully dressed and on top of the covers.
In what seemed like moments later, she woke to the sound of the door softly chiming.
She rose and opened the door expecting to find Commander Adura, but instead was greeted by a young officer she hadn’t met before. Elyth concealed her surprise.
“Yes?” she said.
“Advocate, we are two hours from your launch window,” he said, with a bow. “I’ll escort you when you’re ready.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m ready to go now.”
“Of course,” the officer said. “Follow me, if you will.”
Elyth grabbed her pack and followed him to the elevator. Neither of them felt it necessary to converse.
They traveled to the center deck, where dual hangar bays flanked the spine of the vessel. At first, Elyth was glad to see the more regular activity of the ship’s crew as they carried out their various duties; it made her presence seem less managed than her initial arrival had suggested. But as they walked through the massive hangar, the diligence the crew members showed in ignoring her reinforced her sense of unease. Though a few cast glances her way, most seemed unusually focused on their tasks. And to her careful eye, it wasn’t always clear just what those tasks were.
The officer led Elyth through the starboard bay, weaving between the various transports and gunships that all seemed parked too close together. Her ship waited toward the rear, already locked into its rails, ready for launch out of the last port in the line. It was a muscular vessel, with the look of a hound crouching in its kennel, eager for release. A pair of midshipmen busied themselves nearby verifying their end of the launch protocol.
“Captain Jenzet sends his regards,” the officer said, as they approached the ship’s hatch. “And regrets he couldn’t be here himself to see you off.”
Elyth suspected that was true, but probably not in the way it was suggested.
“Please convey my thanks to him,” she replied.
“Travel well,” he said.
Elyth bowed. “May you ever ascend.”
“May we both, Advocate of the House,” the officer answered. He bowed and took his leave.
Elyth turned and climbed aboard her ship, wondering again at Adura’s absence, whether it had been the commander’s choice, or enforced by some other authority. But that was an answer she knew she was not likely to receive.
She stowed her pack in its compartment just behind the cockpit, and then slid into the pilot’s seat. Hers was a small, single-occupant vessel, originally designed by the Hezra for light mobile reconnaissance. Resting her hands on the controls brought a blend of emotions; emotions reminiscent of those awakened just before full-contact training, where a comforting familiarity with the weapons and armor mingled with sharp anticipation of the coming clash. She felt simultaneously at home in the ship and energized by the unknown that awaited her. She had never been more uncertain of what she might face, nor more anxious about what she might find.
For the moment, however, she set her mind to prepping the ship. The process didn’t typically require as much time as Elyth had requested. But just as she had with her gear, she allowed herself to carry out her systems check in unhurried fashion, attuned to each detail in its moment. And given the disquiet she felt, she took extra care in verifying no unauthorized changes or modifications had been made to her vessel. But all was clear, and her systems were good. As such, when the message came in from Control that they were standing by to make ready for launch, Elyth found that her mind and body were both still and quiet.
“Kita, this is Helegoss Control,” the controller said over comms. “We’re approaching launch vector, how do you stand?”
“Kita is condition white, Helegoss Control,” Elyth answered. “Ready for your action.”
“Very good, Kita, stand by.”
Elyth’s console chirped twice in succession, the only indication that her ship was coordinating with the Helegoss’s launch system.
“We’re angling now,” the controller said. “You may feel some shifting.”
“Understood,” Elyth replied.
A few moments later, her ship vibrated with a deep hum as the rails supporting it adjusted their position.
“Locking position,” said the controller. “Please confirm you’re ready for launch.”
“I confirm Kita is ready for launch, Helegoss Control.”
“Kita confirms. Thirty seconds to launch.”
Elyth started the count in her head, and realized she was hunching her shoulders. She took a deep breath and settled back into the pilot’s seat. This was the easy part. The Helegoss launch protocol required nothing from her; the rail system would fire her like a projectile from the ship, putting her on initial course. It wouldn’t be until after she and the Helegoss had separated a substantial distance that she would need to take control, to redirect toward her actual intended destination of Qel.
“Ten seconds,” the controller said. He was silent again until five, and then counted down from there to launch.
Elyth didn’t reply before the sudden acceleration pressed her back into her seat. Inertial dampeners mitigated most of the force, but it still took conscious effort to keep her heart rate from spiking. She counted to twenty before opening the comm channel one final time.
“Kita has good separation and trajectory. Thank you for the lift, Helegoss Control.”
“Helegoss Control confirms good separation and trajectory, Kita. Safe travels, Advocate.”
Elyth continued along her initial vector for a half hour under continual acceleration until she felt confident she’d gained enough distance to adjust course to Qel. She spent the solitary travel time in quiet meditation.
Once she reached visual range of the planet, she flicked on the exterior view. The opaqueness of the shielded cockpit appeared to dissolve as the system activated, revealing her target.
Out there, a milky, emerald-green sphere hung against the empty veil beyond: Qel. Elyth allowed the impression of the planet to engrave itself upon her mind, to find its place among the bedrock of all the research that had come before. This was the beginning of her true relationship with the world, the first welcome, the greeting, the embrace. With that single image fixed in her mind, she then allowed herself to study details: the wisps and swirls of cloud and storm, vast regions of verdant terrain, wide rivers, serrated mountains. All these she read like the lines and wrinkles of a stranger’s face, each hinting at how frequently expressions might furrow a brow or crease a cheek. For all the imagery available to her through other means, nothing could compare with that first introduction viewed through her own eyes.
Soon enough the world grew too large to see completely, and shortly thereafter Elyth at last had to turn her attention to her own flight controls. Once she entered the atmosphere, she made minor adjustments to avoid flying over population centers. Her vessel was designed for low-signature entry, invisible to all but the most sophisticated systems, but there was no reason to put the design to unnecessary test.
Her primary landing zone lay in the wilderness adjacent to Oronesse. As her craft descended on its final approach, Elyth kept one eye on her instruments while allowing herself to take in the view. The terrain rolled with easy mountains staked with dark pines. There was no snow on the ground, but the trees and earth had a light crystalline shimmer that testified to the region’s cold. Elyth reduced engine power and dropped to just a few hundred feet above the tree line, about two miles out from the landing zone.
There was no pause between the alarm and the impact.
A siren screamed, white light dazzled Elyth’s eyes, and in the same instant that the warning blared, her craft jittered sideways, as though the air had suddenly solidified just off her left wing. The shock left her momentarily dazed, her hands lost the controls; the ship’s automated systems fought wildly to regain balance, skating a knife’s edge to avoid entering a tumble.
Elyth came to her senses enough to retake the controls, but the kinesthetic feedback coming through them was confused and fluctuating. Crippled by the impact, the ship’s sensor network couldn’t cope with the storm of forces tearing at it. For a few eternal seconds, Elyth grappled with her injured craft, striving to filter out the feeling of the controls and to concentrate instead on the horizon, and what her eyes were telling her.
Her training prevented the panic that would have cost her the ship. Getting the craft level again was nearly more than she could manage, and once accomplished, was almost impossible to maintain. No smoke was visible, but the cockpit took on a strong odor of melting circuitry. A grinding vibration warned that the left side of her ship might shear off at any moment. The navigation system bleeped weakly, alerting her that she was off course for her intended landing zone, but otherwise offering no help. None of that mattered now. She would be lucky to survive a landing anywhere she could find.
As she scanned for a clearing or a flat enough patch of land, the thought came to her unbidden that she’d been attacked. And if she’d been attacked, that meant she had been tracked. And if she had been tracked, that very likely meant she would be under pursuit the moment she hit the ground. Assuming she survived.
It was a desperate move, but it was the only solution that came to mind in the few seconds she had to execute it. With nimble hands, Elyth armed the ship’s microrocket pod and then jettisoned the external fuel tank from her craft. In the next moment, she targeted the tank and fired off two rockets. Elyth banked the ship, heading forty-five degrees off line from her previous trajectory. The rockets impacted just before the tank reached the ground, quaking the vessel with a sonic wave.
With any luck, the black smoke and crater from the fuel tank would be convincing enough to stall any pursuers from reaching her actual crash site. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to create much distance between the two. Already the tops of the tallest pines were nearly brushing the belly of her ship, skeletal fingers extended to drag her to the ground below.
After that, there was no thought or plan, only reflex and reaction. The ever-shifting tension and slack in the controls, the battering and scraping of the pines against the hull, the blurring of the frosted ground streaming by below. And then the ship pitched sharply forward and the world bulged, as if the planet itself were a wall of water rushing up to meet her.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.