Four

[keaalu]

     “Kinta?”

     The vulline glanced up, briefly, and swished her tail in greeting; her hands sped across the keyboard as she completed her report to Kamalesi sa’grense, detailing their progress so far. “Hey Ree. What’s up?”

     “Are you nearly finished? As I should like to borrow the terminal, if I may,” Mirii explained, reluctantly. “I would like to speak to Sei, and access some maps.”

     “Why, is there a problem come up?” Kinta had already happily vacated her seat, but now hesitated. “You’re not going to tell me there’s something wrong with the next village, are you?”

     The little kirasiinu smiled, tensely. “No, nothing to do with that. I just-… our visitors?”

     “What about them?” The vulline gave her a very wary look, her ears flattening.

     “You still do not trust them?”

     “No further than I can throw them, no.” Kinta set a hand on her friend’s shoulder, and gave her a very long, very serious scrutiny from her pale gold eyes. “After everything that’s gone on in your life, and all the people who’ve abused your trust, your good nature, you still need reminding to be less openly trusting?”

     Mirii smiled, and covered her friend’s hand with her own. “You do not trust me to make the most logical decisions for what happens in my own life?”

     Kinta shook her head. “Honestly? No,” she said, bluntly, then clarified, seeing her friend’s downcast expression; “I mean, I’m glad you found folk that you kind of share a kinship with, I just… you sure you’re not just being overoptimistic about things? Just because they’re like you doesn’t mean they’re good people, you know. I mean, nyen are like me, on the inside, doesn’t mean they’re good!”

     Mirii chuckled, amused by the analogy. “I know,” she reassured. “And that is why I wish to get to know them. To find out who they really are. If you were the only flesh and blood creature in a society of computers and wires, would you not wish to find out more about the first creature you met that was like you?”

     Although her ears remained flat, uneasy, Kinta forced a smile, baring her small teeth in a grin. “I think this is all an excuse, really, so you can have a naughty chatter with your mate,” she teased, gently. “You’ve not seen him in, what, nine days, now?”

     “Just what are you trying to insinuate, friend? And it is nearly eleven, actually.” Mirii pouted, pretending to be terribly wounded.

     “See?!” Kinta spread her arms, triumphant. “Now I heard how lovesick you aves get when you’re apart, you’re telling me you’re not going to talk about what you’re going to do to each other when you’re back together?”

     “Pssh.” Mirii flipped a hand, dismissively. “You do not think I need your primitive technology to talk to my husband, do you?” she challenged, with a twinkle in her eye. “Especially as we do not need to merely discuss sexual matters over the comms terminal, we can indulge in a form of it in private if we wish.” She tapped her brow, knowingly. “Sensors do not have to be manually triggered for the sensations to be ‘felt’.”

     Kinta grinned and gave her a wink, but her blush was furiously visible inside her ears. “Now you’re taking things too far too far into the realm of ‘too much information’,” she scolded, and hastily vacated the premises.

     Mirii smiled, privately, and settled in the chair behind the computer. It was amusing, she concluded, watching the vul acting more squeamish than the species that had galactic renown for being prudes.

     “Mirii!” Sei’s ears perked forwards, pleased to see her, when the signal finally got through, and he reached out and flattened a palm against the screen, as if attempting to touch her through it. “Is everything all right?”

     She smiled, reassuringly, returning the gesture so her small gold fingers fitted into the silhouette left by his larger black ones. “All is fine, dear. I have an update for you, and a small request.”

     “...A request?” He perked his head to one side, curiously.

     “The vessels you notified me about?”

     He nodded, silently.

     “I have made contact with their passengers.”

     He quirked his head over in the other direction. “But they were unmanned, were they not?” he challenged.

     “Most certainly not!” She smiled. “In fact, their occupants were creatures similar to ourselves. They came here searching for a fugitive, and I have agreed to help them find him.”

     “A fugitive?” Sei’s expression grew more concerned. “That does not sound altogether appealing, Mirii. Are you sure you wish to do this?”

     She nodded, decisively. “I am. I am confident that they themselves are safe to travel with, as they are police operatives. Additionally, I have discussed their situation and it seems that in order to rectify what has gone wrong, they must find the one they are looking for as soon as possible. If I can help them achieve this, I very much wish to do so.”

     Sei’s dark lips compressed into a concerned line, but he nodded. “All right,” he agreed, reluctantly. “I trust your judgement, and you are not so inexperienced as you once were. Promise me that you will at least keep in contact with me and tell me how you are getting on?”

     “You do not need me to promise you that, love, and you know I will not be far away.” She smiled, affectionately. “I would never intentionally neglect to inform you of my progress. I would miss your voice, if nothing else!”

     Thankfully, he took the humour in the spirit it was intended. “Now that we have the important part out of the way, how is it that I may help you, dear?”

     “Would you send me the co-ordinates of the other vessel that landed near here?”

     Sei perked an ear, and glanced sidelong at his control panel. “We do not have a very accurate fix,” he cautioned, keeping his gaze on the terminal as it supplied him necessary information. “It was a visual trace, and the region was cloudy.”

     “Well, it must be better than Slipstream’s data,” Mirii reasoned. “They were some distance away when Firewire landed, and the magnetic disturbance in the upper atmosphere affected their trace.”

     “Firewire is the occupant of the other vessel?”

     She nodded. “We monitored his vessel all the way to ground level, correct?” she chased.

     “Mostly.” Sei nodded. “I will send you what we have.”

     “Thank you, dear.” She smiled and touched her hand to the screen, again, allowing her fingers to match with his. “How much longer will we remain here?”

     “At the moment, I have no idea,” he admitted, sadly. “All I know for certain is that you would have had ample opportunity to complete your program of vaccinations, had you not met these newcomers.”

     The terminal beeped softly, and readings began to filter out. Good, these looked promising. “It will be that long?”

     “Possibly.” Sei nodded, tiredly; that must be why he looked so (comparatively) dishevelled, with his deep turquoise hair all frizzy and un-combed. “There are those among the Salire who do not believe they need to consult the natives in their planning, as it is their world, now. The ruta are simply ‘part of the landscape’, and may be altered to suit laima purposes in the same way that the ground is.”

     Mirii dropped her gaze. That the friendly, accommodating little ruta probably wouldn’t even mind, too much, was the worst part.

     “Please, pet. Do not rush,” he soothed, gently. “I have much to sort before I can even think of leaving here. Just allow me to inform you one last thing, and I shall let you go. Are your friends planning to search by air?”

     “I have not asked,” Mirii admitted. “Although I suspect that might not be on the cards, Slipstream has admitted to a fear of heights.”

     Sei quirked an ear. “I was under the impression your friends were synthetics?”

     “They are.”

     “…And he is scared of heights?”

     “That is correct.”

     Sei gave her a very long, quizzical look, but then visibly dismissed the confusion with a little shake of the head. “The reason for my concern is that there is a magnetic storm over the western ocean, heading east. The Salire have grounded all aerial and stellar transits until it has passed, as a cautionary measure.”

     “You think it might be harmful?” Mirii’s ‘childhood’ was full of bad memories of storms of all varieties, not just magnetic ones; her ears sagged, dramatically.

     “To yourselves, no,” Sei reassured, thankfully. “And probably not to the vessels, either, if truth be told. But if the Salire have been concerned enough to issue a warning, I reason that we should be similarly cautious, and not tempt the fates, as it were.”

0o0o0o0o0
     Slipstream had parked himself just under the very margin of the operations marquee to wait, when Mirii went into the field operations tent, and was thankfully still there when she returned. He gave her an optimistic look when she re-emerged. “Anything?”

     Mirii set a roll of map down on the table, and spread it out, carefully. “Sei’s readings indicate Firewire landed somewhere around here.” She dabbed a dainty finger down against the spot the small vessel had landed in; just north of the equatorial mountains, in a region named ‘Lahar’. “It is a seismically active area, with active volcanoes,” she cautioned. “It would be best to set out early in the event that he has picked an, ah, unsuitable spot.”

     “You mean, in case he landed in a volcano,” Slipstream intuited, dryly. “If not for what we need to get back off him, I’d say good riddance.” He gave Celerity a brief, hostile glance, and commented more loudly, “so long as no-one wants us to hang around here for no reason any longer, I’m ready to go at any time.”

     Celerity looked openly hurt by the accusatory tone of voice, but shook her head. “I’m happy to go whenever anyone else is,” she reassured, glumly. “So long as we know where we’re going…”

     While Fred took up a spot on Slipstream’s back, Mirii made herself comfortable on Celerity’s broad shoulder, using her antennae as something to hang on to. “Travel might not be easy in the south,” she cautioned, grimly, as the little group set out. “The land has not been terraformed, and the ruta have not extensively farmed here. It may prove to be… ‘boggy’.”

     Slipstream pulled a face; Celerity patted his shoulder, reassuringly, but he moved out of reach. She let her hand drop back to her side, disappointedly.

     “As soon as we pass the kari and get out of Lahar into the north, travel should get more simple,” Mirii added, hoping to reassure a little. “We are reasonably close to the border, it should not take long for us to get there.”

     “So what’s so different about the north?” Slipstream challenged.

     “It has been more extensively developed, by the laima,” Mirii explained. “They have drained the worst of the fenlands so they are inhabitable, built roads, cities… Most of the wilderness has been tamed and made more easily habitable.”

     “Laima aren’t the little fuzzy ones with the obsession over bathing, I’m guessing.”

     “No, the ‘little fuzzy ones’ are the ruta. The laima are much taller beings,” Mirii agreed. “They look a little more like me, tall, slender and mostly hairless, but with a different facial structure and flatter feet. They colonised – although some would say they invaded – this world just over a hundred years ago. Even ‘Telluvia’ is the laima name for the world.”

     The two larger robots exchanged looks.

     “I hope that’s not a bad sign,” Celerity commented, softly, “and we’re not walking into a warzone.”

     Mirii smiled, reassuringly. “No. It is peaceful, if… not always entirely lawful, or especially moral,” she explained, although there was a trace of scorn in her words. “In general, the ruta like visitors, and they allowed the laima to stay. Unfortunately, the laima are a species who have put a heavy importance on individual possession of territory and power, and did not exactly stay in a friendly capacity.”

     “How pleasant are they as a species?” Celerity coaxed. “Warlike, unkind, cruel?”

     “Well… They act friendly enough, and if you are important, they will be the most gracious of people, even somewhat sycophantic at times, but…” A sigh. “Telluvia has been turned into a highly populated and expensive holiday world,” the pen explained, bluntly. “If you can afford it, you can have it. The laima very much like the finer things in life, and their lives revolve around firstly improving their social status, and secondly what they can get from who.”

     “Didn’t the ruta mind being invaded?” Slipstream wondered, looking up at their guide.

     Mirii clucked her tongue, sadly. “The ruta were in absolutely no position to argue. One of the Laima Salire, the ruling body of the original colonists, was unwell upon arrival. They thought nothing of it, as it was just a simple respiratory infection, harmless to themselves… but it proved deadly to the ruta, who had no immunity to it. It that killed off a very large number of natives in the northern territories, and those few that survived have mostly been subjugated, enslaved. Those in the south were thought safe, but a small reservoir of infected laima moved past the equatorial mountains, and the cycle started over. We have hoped to vaccinate as many as possible before the past repeats itself.”

     “So what kept them out of the south in the first place? They just… didn’t like it, or what?” Slipstream wondered. “It’s… well, kinda pretty, I suppose, for a green wilderness with no facilities.”

     Mirii shook her head, in agreement. “Laima particularly do not like the large, biting insects,” she confirmed, “and the land is generally marshy and humid, inland. They have everything the require in the north. The only laima you generally see this side of the great divide are the few – very, very few – socially-responsible ones, who come to offer medical treatment, and the braver souls who come here on occasion to hunt the wild game, for trophies.” She gestured at the bushes.

     Celerity followed her friend’s arm, and noticed the animal, half-hidden in the dappled sunlight; it was a fairly big, ungainly thing, with large ears and a trunk and long twisting horns spiralling out from its head. Its hide was covered in sleek hair, mottled with peculiar browns and greys that made it look like it had been coloured in an artist’s paint, then sprayed with enough water that the colours ran together. It watched them pass, out of uninterested little brown eyes, chewing at the cud.

     “It hardly seems worth it,” Celerity commented. “Such a big, soft, dumb thing.” Just like you, hey, Lara? “Why would anyone want to kill it?”

     “In all honesty? I do not know.” Mirii shook her head.

     She might have said more, if not for Slipstream. The mech hadn’t been paying the greatest attention to where he was walking in the first place, but now managed to miss the warning clumps of reeds growing around his feet, and put his foot square into an unseen patch of thick mud.

     “Augh!” He flailed his arms, finding himself sinking. He had far too much momentum for him to have caught himself without going flat on his face, and was forced to take another step to catch himself. He promptly sank into the mud, almost all the way up to his waist. “Oh for fuck’s sake-!”

     Fred chirred in alarm and leaped from his shoulder, for safety, landing on the wet but stable ground at the margins of the swamp. Celerity hastily snagged him and passed him to Mirii, before he could get trodden on, then offered a hand to help her nephew out of the murk.

     He glared up at her, in a bad mood made worse by humiliation. “I can get myself out,” he snapped, stabbing a threatening finger at her, and wallowing in the filth. “Just… back up, all right? Give me some fragging room.”

     Disappointed, but not willing to give him any more excuses to work himself into a tantrum, Celerity backed up.

     It took Slipstream only a few seconds to realise that hey, um, maybe he should have swallowed his pride and his bad mood for long enough to take Celerity up on the offer of assistance. All this wallowing was getting him deeper and deeper, and by the time he considered changing direction and actually apologising and asking for help, he was chest deep. And his thrustered foot – the thruster core was full of slimy mud already, and he was fighting hard against an attack of the surges – had now caught under a stray root, so not only was he still sinking, he was anchored. For. Fuck’s. Sake.

     He snarled and jerked himself backwards, trying to un-hook his foot from where it was trapped, somewhere beneath the surface, and promptly toppled over backwards. There was a horrible squelch and he vanished from sight.

     “Slipstream!” Celerity forgot all about his snarly mood, and staggered to the churned edge of the swamp. “Seem!” How in the world was she supposed to help fish him out if she couldn’t even see him?

     There was a flicker of lilac light and a slup of deforming air, and the smaller robot materialised a yard or two to the side of her. Of course. Lucky he had his teleport, and the gumption to use it. She glanced up, and promptly had to swallow a laugh, hard enough to crimp something up inside. Damnit. But he did look furiously comical.

     The formerly royal-blue Slipstream was now utterly black, from head to toe, every last square inch of him coated in an inch-thick, cloying layer of mud; his once-lilac optics blazed like hot little coals from his besmirched features. For a full second or two, he just stood there, as if stunned into immobility, his arms akimbo, slowly dripping. “Don’t you dare laugh!” he spluttered, shrilly, finally rediscovering his voice, waving a threatening arm at them and splattering mud, using his free hand to swipe across his features.

     Celerity managed to keep a straight face. “Come on, we passed a stream back this way,” she offered. “I’ll help you get cleaned up.”

     “No time for that!” he snapped, already stomping away in the direction they’d previously been travelling, carefully navigating his way around the bog this time. “Just… just slagging warn me next time.” Lumps of mud plopped off him in great, unappealing curds.

     “Of course.” Celerity bit her lip and tried not to smile inappropriately; coated in mud and bits of plant matter over every inch of his small frame, her nephew looked rather like some sort of swamp monster from one of his father’s favourite earth-made ‘movies’. Wouldn’t do for him to see her smile; he’d think she let him walk into the mud on purpose. She kept her face carefully neutral.

     After Slipstream’s mishap with the bog, the journey north became… well, not particularly inspiring. The ground was very flat; it had a slight undulation to it, but not enough to channel the water into anything but slow moving rivers and waterlogged marshes. Slipstream avoided all the areas of reedbed and the slight puddles with the same sort of rabid diligence that would have been expected of someone avoiding lakes of red-hot lava; the closest he intentionally got to water was the river they were forced to cross, and even then he made sure he did so by the pebbliest area he could find. At least the moving water washed his thrusters clean, which improved his mood a fraction.

     The magnetic storm blew in exactly as predicted in the late afternoon, all sound and fury, but harmless except for the rain that followed it – hard lashings of cold water that soaked everyone within seconds. It rinsed the remainder of Slipstream’s mud off him, but saturated Fred to the skin, and made the landscape treacherously slippery. Even Celerity lost her footing once or twice; if not for her reflexes, she’d have probably crushed Mirii beyond repair at least once. Getting north as quickly as possible transitioned smoothly into finding shelter as quickly as possible.

     The vegetation they ended up beneath wasn’t particularly good for keeping them dry, but then it was really only Fred that it mattered to. The plant they’d retired beneath wasn’t quite a tree, but rather a series of large, flat leaves that emerged in a sunburst from a common centre, and it kept all but the most persistent of drips off them.

     The two biggest machines weren’t particularly affected by the weather, except where droplets of cold water occasionally got beneath the plating and sizzled against hot components; the steam was distracting, and uncomfortable, but not harmful. Mirii sat between them; her white nurse’s uniform was already greyish, and brown with mud at the bottom of the trouser-legs, and her neatly-styled hair had turned into a wet green skullcap, plastered down around her head.

     Poor Fred looked particularly cold, bedraggled and uncomfortable, his wet fur sticking out in clumps. He sat in Celerity’s palm, snuggled against her chest and poaching heat from her exhaust vents, using her a little as a large, sentient blow-drier. She’d already retrieved a little sealed plastic container of thick soup out of her subspace for him; he took it with a click of thanks and tore the top off with his little teeth, and sat and sucked hungrily at it.

     The rain continued long into the night; by the time the clouds finally cleared away, and the largest moon was fat and heavy like a droplet of molten brass on the horizon, Fred was fast asleep in Celerity’s arms, and Mirii was dormant, leaning against Slipstream.

     The quiet had already made the big Policebot restless; she didn’t recall a time that Slipstream had been quite so silent, and the hostile atmosphere now felt as if it had a physical weight, pressing in around her.

     “Seem…?” she started, but he cut in before she could finish.

     “What?” Clipped, sharp, almost a bark. Still angry.

     “What do I need to do,” she wondered, quietly, “to make this task acceptable to you?”

     Slipstream didn’t even look up. “Go away.”

     “I… only meant-”

     He shrugged, still not taking his gaze from the moon. “I know what you meant, and that’s how you can help.”

     “…by going away?”

     “Yes.”

     “Are you s-”

     “Yes.”

     Celerity studied the ground, quietly, and listened to the soft rasp of Fred’s breathing. Dack was right. Stop trying. You’re not getting a look over that wall of hostility, yet, let alone getting through it. Can’t talk to him while he won’t even let you finish your sentences. The minuscule earlier improvement to Slipstream’s sour, impatient mood had quite clearly worn off.

     “As soon as we come to a point where it makes sense for us to separate,” she husked, quietly. “Then I’ll go away.”

     He grunted, wordlessly, apparently satisfied by the answer, and finally allowed himself to go dormant.

     Celerity stayed awake the entire night, watching over the little party. She wasn’t sure why, because there was nothing out there large enough to hurt any of them, but… still. She felt obliged to continue to do a good job with her responsibility, even if Slipstream didn’t want her to. The less chance she gave things to go wrong, the better.

     They’d only been travelling for an hour or two, the next morning – with Fred still fast asleep on Celerity’s left shoulder – when they ran up against an unexpected obstacle. Not an insurmountable one by any stretch of the imagination… unless your name was Slipstream.

     Out in front of them stretched the vast golden expanse of Lahar, a country composed almost entirely of volcanic desert. The combined heat from the sun and the lava lakes made the air shimmer, angrily.

     “Desert,” Slipstream observed, faintly. “I’m not going through there.”

     Mirii gave him a curious look. “We are at the narrowest portion of the field,” she explained, gently. “And no seismic activity has been recorded recently. It is safe to traverse.”

     “I am not,” he repeated, firmly, even though his voice was shaky, “going across there.”

     “Is there a way around?” Celerity wondered, before her nephew could work himself into too great a vibrating ball of stress.

     Mirii shook her head. “The desert stretches all the way from the ocean to the Hajalla kari, and we are thousands of miles away from the coast. The mountains are not easy to traverse.”

     “Fine. We’ll go back and get the ship.” Slipstream was already doubling back the way they’d just come.

     “Seem,” Celerity warned, gently. “We’ll be wasting time if we do that.”

     “I am not going across the desert!”

     “I’m not asking you to. Just… calm down a moment. Please?” Leaving Slipstream to fume and mutter to himself under his breath, she turned to Mirii. “Firewire’s vessel isn’t too far from here, is it, if we did a straight line due north?”

     “Correct,” Mirii confirmed. “But if we cannot cross the desert-”

     “How about the foothills?” Celerity looked over towards the vicious undulations just to the east of their position. “They look… manageable. How long would it take to cross them?”

     Mirii gave her a concerned look. “They are more treacherous than they look,” she warned. “The rock is very friable, I do not think that it would be wise to attempt a crossing when – um, no offence – when your weight is taken into consideration.”

     Celerity smiled, tiredly. “That won’t be a problem. It’ll take more energy, but we can both hover. Sound acceptable, Seem?”

     The little mech had already made his own judgement of the situation, and instead of a small blue robot there now sat a small blue vehicle, its engine idling, hovering gently a foot or so above the ground on antigravity lifters. “Let’s just get a move on.”

     “I had not realised you were shape-shifters,” Mirii observed, curiously. “Is that an ability common to all your kind?”

     “Most of us,” Celerity confirmed, offering a sleepy Fred to Mirii, who accepted him carefully into her arms. “We’re not all so pretty as Seem, though. Give me a minute, then you can both climb aboard.”

     What Celerity meant by ‘pretty’ was not ‘attractive’ as much as ‘small and sleek’, it rapidly became apparent, as once the big femme had finished rearranging her plating, she wasn’t unattractive, just… big, and a little boxy-looking. Slipstream was elegant and sleek, sharp-cornered like his bipedal form, built for speed and agility; Celerity was heavy, powerful, built for strength over speed.

     She pinged her front door open, and allowed Mirii to clamber aboard; Fred made himself comfortable in his usual spot in the opposite foot-well, his upper pair of arms folded against the seat and his chin resting atop them.

     “Ready to go?” Slipstream chivvied.

     “Any time you are,” Celerity confirmed, briefly running system checks and gauging her remaining fuel – all checked out fine.

     “Good.” He gunned his engines and made his thrusters snarl, and accelerated away fast enough to deliberately kick sand and shingle all up over Celerity’s front screens.

     She made a little noise of pain, but didn’t challenge him; simply applied a little thrust behind herself, and followed him into the mountains.

     “I am sorry he is upset with you,” Mirii offered, privately, watching through the security field as the ground flashed past outside. “I discussed things with him on your first evening with us, and I do not believe he genuinely means what he says.”

     Celerity throttled her engine to generate a sort of appreciative purr. “Thank you for your concern,” she murmured, softly. “And I know he doesn’t really mean it, too. But it’s my own fault. I made a mistake, and I need to make up for it. I just… wish I could do so before we get too far into this journey. Trying to work together but not speak to each other is putting strain on our relationship that we really don’t need.” She thrummed her vents in a sigh. “And there’s no guarantee either of us will get out of this intact. I don’t want him to have any more excuse to stress himself out.”

17503 / 80000 words. 22% done!