Horizon Storms - Kevin J. Anderson [214]
Rememberer Vao’sh scooped up one of the portable lights and rushed after the human scholar, fleeing the still groaning and humming flyer. Nur’of helped the two agricultural kithmen, Mhas’k and Syl’k, out of the hatch.
Anton shouted, “If I’m wrong, we can always come back—but if I’m right, we’ll know in less than a minute.” He sprinted across the cold darkness, not needing a light of his own. “Run!”
Thoroughly motivated to protect his own life, Designate Avi’h scrambled away, dragging his bureaucratic assistant along with him.
Engineer Nur’of was the last one out. “Perhaps the engines were overheating,” he suggested. “By landing in time, we may have avoided the problem.”
Anton motioned them all to hurry. “Or maybe the danger was caused by something else entirely. Come on!” At the moment, his best guess was that their mysterious saboteurs had reconfigured the flyer engines so they would fail catastrophically while being used. The countdown kept ticking at the back of his mind.
The air was very cold, and the night sky seemed penetratingly dark. Here, far from Prime and still a long distance from Secda, even Anton felt isolated and vulnerable. He could imagine how terrified the Ildirans themselves must be. When the group came to a halt, panting and anxious, they held their emergency blazers high, looking like a cluster of fireflies.
Designate Avi’h turned to Anton, his panic manifesting as anger and blame. “Now you can see that you have overreacted. Was it necessary to listen to—”
Behind him, the third and last flyer erupted in a timed explosion that ignited the fuel tanks, ruined the engines, and blasted shrapnel and supplies into the sky. The pieces continued to burn, arcing high and then crashing down like flaming meteors. The bright fires were like beacons in the darkness, but the horrified Ildirans took no comfort or strength from the crackling light.
Vao’sh spoke first, shaping their immediate response. “Rememberer Anton and Engineer Nur’of have saved our lives.”
“But we are lost in the middle of nowhere,” Ilure’l moaned. “We are vulnerable to the darkness and the shadows…and whatever else lives here.”
“And only twelve of us have survived—and one human,” Bhali’v said. “The others are dead. That’s not nearly enough for a splinter.”
Anton knew he would have to hold them together somehow. “There’s still hope. Even though the other two shuttles were destroyed, we’ve thwarted whoever is trying to kill us. We can make it.” Sensing their despair, understanding that the Ildirans were more terrified of the loneliness and the dark night than of faceless killers, he tried to sound optimistic. “We’re still alive, but we have to help ourselves. We can’t just sit here and wait for rescue.” He pointed in the direction of dawn, where he tried to convince himself he could see the barest smear of haze on the horizon. “There’s only one thing to do—start walking.” He took Vao’sh by the arm and bravely headed out.
In a low voice, the rememberer said, “Our story in the Saga just got more interesting—if any of us survives to tell the tale.”
Chapter 108 — CHIEF SCIENTIST HOWARD PALAWU
During night on Rheindic Co, after the colonist volunteers went to sleep in their gathered tents near the base of the Klikiss cliff city, the frenetic pace of the transportal hub died down just enough for Howard Palawu to do his work.
As the Chief Scientist studied the circuits and machinery left behind by the vanished alien race, he input notes and conjectures into the old datascreen he had kept for so many years. He still didn’t understand how the transportal network functioned, and with each detail he learned, his conclusions shifted back and forth. Ideas and hypotheses were part of the scientific method, and Palawu did not regret the detours and blind alleys.
It was the same with his life. While he might wish he could have changed a few decisions or behaved differently, Palawu didn’t consider his missteps to be “mistakes.” Every action was part of the