Salvaged Destiny (5 page)

“Right. You need someone who is awake, has some free time
every few weeks and is not covered in weird fungal growths. I’ll find someone
for you, someone sweet and sexy who is looking for a big guy like you. I’m sure
there are a few women out there who prefer hulking fellows to refined specimens
such as myself.”

* * * * *

Yawning, Del waited for Lieutenant Casta behind a line of
date palms along the road heading south, away from the port and toward their
search area. It was early and she tried to look inconspicuous but there were
still plenty of ag bots and human workers in the fields and on the road,
continuing with work that had begun before the sun emerged that morning. The
air around her smelled of fertilizer, dust, compost and above all, living and
growing plants. It was the Sayre that humans needed, but her Sayre was out in
the wilderness—silent, rugged, filled with geothermal spots, exotic fungi and
mystery.

She hoped Casta had managed to find enough gear to make it
through the day and that he’d remembered to bring scanners from the security
station. She didn’t have anything approaching the power of the sensor he had
promised. If its capabilities were as he described, they might actually have a
chance of discovering the cache of weapons—either through detecting the rare
elements themselves, or the hollow space that they would be in. Having to do a
manual and visual search along hundreds of feet of cliffs was doomed to
failure.

A tall male figure approached her, walking easily along the
road with his long and strong legs, lugging a pack and carrying two cups. It
was Casta, looking bright and bashful underneath a battered hat. His shades were
slung around his neck and he seemed ready to go.

“Good morning, Citizen Browen,” he greeted her as she
started the motor. He handed her a cup and shrugged his pack into the back of
the cart, then climbed up next to her, thighs bulging, big dusty boots on the
cart floor.

“What’s this?”

“Coffee.” He dug into his shirt pocket and retrieved some
packets “I brought sugar, cinnamon, lemon and cream, since I didn’t know how
you liked it.”

“How do you know if I even like coffee?”

Lazlo looked taken aback and Del repressed her grumpiness. “Hey,
I like coffee, I just didn’t get much sleep last night. Don’t listen to me
until I’ve had a few sips.”

“I didn’t sleep much either. That’s why I picked up the
coffee.”

She nodded and smiled a little, then pulled the vehicle out
on the road and accelerated south, dodging agricultural equipment as they traveled.
Casta obediently added lemon to her coffee as she requested and busied himself
as he doctored his own.

“Did you find everything on your list?” She had her doubts
that he had. That’s why she’d packed an extra set of everything and stowed it
in the cart undercarriage that morning.

Lazlo shook his head and glanced at her. “No, there were a
few things like thermal tape and a personal reflector that I didn’t have. But I
did borrow two of the sensors and a long-transmit antenna too, so we can try to
send data live to the port today rather than wait until we return.” She nodded,
impressed that he’d tried so hard to comply with her request. They could likely
get by without his extra thermal tape and the reflector. As long as no
disasters struck.

“When might a satellite be overhead?”

“None today, but there will be one tomorrow afternoon.”

Del nodded again. She’d left a record of where they were
exploring for her father and mother, on a time release. If she hadn’t returned
and disabled it within twenty-four hours, it would ping to them and let them
know where to start searching. It seemed the most reasonable thing to do,
despite her pledge to not talk about this with anyone. After all, she hadn’t
actually told anyone what she was doing at this point, and with luck, never
technically would.

They were passing the big fields now, leaving behind the
earliest cultivated sections of Sayre, which were now mostly established
orchards and high-yield vegetable plots. The newer, big fields contained
immense swathes of grain crops and had fewer machines and workers. Those were
only active at planting, harvest and intermittent applications of soil
conditioners.

Del sped up the cart and sipped her coffee. It was very
good. It had been a long time since she had treated herself to the expensive
beverage.

“Thank you for the coffee. It’s very good.”

“You’re welcome.” Lazlo grinned at her, eyes hidden behind
shaded lenses as she’d instructed, and she was struck again by how open and
friendly the man was. She felt very at ease around him, which wasn’t her usual
state around strangers. Which made her even more cautious.

“So who are we reporting back to, if we can get the
transmission to go?”

“Major Sekar. He’s the only one who knows what we’re doing.”

“Why all the secrecy? Between the confidentiality agreement
and having to meet behind the date palms, I’m curious.”

Lazlo leaned back and Del watched as he took a breath. He
had a very broad chest. “Several reasons. One, these weapons we’re after would
be very valuable on the underground market. If people knew they were here, we’d
be competing with off-world salvagers, which nobody wants.”

Del nodded at this, momentarily regretting she wouldn’t be
able to take a stab at selling the things herself and making some real marks. But
she had agreed to act as a guide and not claim possession of the things if they
ever found them. She was a person of her word. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t
look for other interesting things along the way.

“And another reason is possible interference from Sheriff
Harata. He doesn’t take well to having port personnel in his jurisdiction, let
alone having one of us doing something official out here. So we need to avoid
him even seeing us—well, me actually, so that he doesn’t trump up some charge
to hold me. He could make me disappear for quite a while.” Lazlo looked grim.

“I want him to avoid seeing me as well. Do you think he
would arrest me too?”

Casta looked over at her and was quiet a moment. “Probably.”
He must have noticed her dismay because he added some reassurance. “But that’s
not going to happen. We’re going to be discreet. With just the two of us, no
one should notice anything. That’s why the major set the operation up like this
rather than send out a platoon of uniformed security in an armored convoy. Anybody
looking at us will see two people out for some sightseeing or a picnic.”

“Right. Let’s hope.”

Lazlo cleared his throat and looked over at Citizen Browen. Del
Browen. He wanted to call her Del, but that would be presumptuous. Despite her
brusque manner, he felt more and more that she was a nice person. Quiet and
serious and probably more comfortable out on her own. Here he was asking her to
risk her freedom and her family’s security to help him in this search. He hadn’t
negotiated the reward price with her when they’d reached an agreement for her
services, merely signed off on the full amount that Major Sekar had budgeted. That
amount seemed too paltry now.

Lazlo had spent a little time looking over her public data. She
didn’t update her information very often and most of the fields that would have
revealed something about herself she’d left blank. No mention of entertainments
she liked or updates on things she’d done or places she’d gone.

Her sister Dee Dee’s information was vast and ever changing—constant
observations on her work and meals and clothes and meetings. It had exhausted
him after about a minute and he had returned to reviewing her sister’s torpid
data. He suspected that Dee Dee had cajoled her sister into posting the trivial
amount of information available. Del was pretty too, in an unadorned way. She
obviously didn’t spend a lot of time on her appearance, but considering what
she did every day, restraint made sense.

Lazlo wondered what she would look like dressed up for a
nice dinner. Then he started to wonder about other aspects of her body and that
was exactly what he warned himself not to do—so he decided to talk with her
instead of look at her and think about her.

“So would you care to tell me why you like going out here?”

She adjusted her hat and shades a bit and cleared her
throat. “Ever since I was little, I’ve loved it. All of that space to
experience. It always felt safe and welcoming out here, unlike the port, where
everything seems dirty and broken. And crowded with noisy people. I love the
air and sky and rocks out here. Especially the rocks.” She glanced over at him.
“You probably think that’s weird.”

“No I don’t. People have all sorts of interests. Why rocks?”
Stars, if she thought the port was noisy and crowded, she should never travel
to Weave or Gebisa. She’d go catatonic with stress. But he definitely
understood the peace she must feel out here on her own. He felt that way
whenever he was on a wave board out on the ocean at home on Freton.

“Because rocks are beautiful, aren’t they?” Del didn’t wait
for him to answer. “For me, it was the color and textures at first, then when I
really started to study them, learning how they form over time, their
composition and properties. It’s all fascinating. How one has the ability to
refract light while another is incredibly dense. Some are pushed up to the
surface from deep below the mantle. And of course, there are the craters from
meteor strikes. Those are full of strange samples. No one knows much about the
actual geology of Sayre. So I have to learn as I go. Did you know there are
magnetized sand dunes out here?”

He shook his head, not really understanding her enthusiasm
for magnetic sand but enjoying her openness. This was the first he’d seen her
relaxed and happy and it made her even more appealing. They were passing little
evidence of human agriculture now, just large fields of grains and construction
equipment intended to excavate and irrigate more fields. Expansion of the
agricultural business continued without a pause on Sayre.

“Those dunes are so interesting. I sent a sample to a
collector and she reported back that when the container arrived on her planet,
they were inert. All magnetic polarization was gone. This planet has some wonky
internal workings. That’s why it’s so hard to get reliable tracking out here. I
wish I could—” Del abruptly stopped talking as the cart jolted underneath them,
splashing the coffee out of the cups and nearly sending him to the floorboards.

“Sorry! I should have slowed down for that, I just got
distracted.” Del grinned as she drove the cart along a rough path. The jolt had
been the cart leaving the pavement, which had ended in an abrupt line at the
edge of the fields. Now they were on uneven ground heading toward some low,
dark hills on the horizon. Lazlo mopped at the coffee spills with some napkins.
“Don’t ask me about geology unless you want to be bored to sleep. At least that’s
what my family says.”

“I wasn’t bored.” Which was true. This planet did have some
strange properties, which had played havoc with most of the remote monitoring
devices they’d tried to send up. Trixie had been working for months on
modifying drones that still tended to crash frequently or fail to keep up their
end of the conversation after a few hours.

“You weren’t bored yet, but you would have been in about
five minutes. Dozing in about ten.” She sounded cheerful enough about it.

“I doubt I would be able to doze on this drive,” Lazlo replied
as the vehicle took another abrupt nosedive. He managed to not spill his coffee
this time though.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. We should probably talk about our
plan for today.”

Lazlo nodded and realized he didn’t want to talk about what
they were here to do, at least not yet. He wanted to hear more about Del’s
rocks. But she had returned to serious and reserved.

“So what is our plan?”

Del nodded, looking thoughtful as she rubbed one gloved hand
on her cheek. “As I mentioned last night, today we should search around that
first set of coordinates. Of course, they’re probably not accurate to within a
half mile or so, but the topography in that area isn’t too extreme and I think
we will be able to make a decent attempt in a few hours. It’s good practice for
when we have to go into harder country.”

“If we have to keep looking. We might get lucky today.”
Lazlo felt optimistic. It was a beautiful day and adventure awaited.

“Doubtful. I just don’t have that feeling yet.” Del shook
her head and glanced at him with a resigned twist of her lips.

“What feeling?”

“Just something I get sometimes when something really
wonderful is close by. And I don’t have it.” Del rubbed her fingers in her hair
and looked around, contemplative. That left her brown hair sticking up in angry
spikes and he wanted to smooth them down, it would be a good excuse to touch—
No.
No touching.

Lazlo tried to boost her confidence. “We aren’t close enough
to the coordinates yet. Not that I doubt your intuition, but I wish that we had
some broad-spectrum sensor drones. Five or six of those would make the whole
operation go that much more quickly.”

“How about getting better maps while we’re at it?”

“I guess if we had drones and maps, we would be out and back
in a few hours.”

Del laughed, a full-throated guffaw that made him laugh
along with her. “Where would be the fun in that, I ask you?”

“No fun at all,” Lazlo agreed with a smile but then they hit
another dip and he bit his tongue. He decided to hold on the grab bars for a
while and let her concentrate on driving.

Lazlo checked his datpad again and sighed. The custom geolocator
he’d installed on his personal device kept positioning them in a cornfield at
least forty kilometers from where he thought they actually were, and not
knowing his location was making him anxious. Del Browen just kept hiking,
pulling herself up slopes and sliding down gullies as if she was exploring someone’s
backyard. Water dripped from the walls of the canyon they were exploring
fruitlessly and the sound made him thirsty.

“Could we stop for a moment? I’d like to recalibrate my
geolocator.” His guide stopped and turned to look at him, expression neutral as
she pulled a small bottle from her waist and took a sip. So far she hadn’t said
much to him, other than to order him to look in certain places and use his
scanner.

Lazlo requested an update on his datpad and waited for an
acknowledgement. Del watched him for a moment, then began to scan the mucky
floor of the canyon, shuffling along, head down, apparently more interested in
mud than what he was doing. Or failing to do. The third attempt he made to
recalibrate was concluded yet again by an apologetic error message.
Crack
it.

“Citizen Browen, do you know where we are? My equipment is
not really working well.”

“I know where we are,” was her calm reply. She was now
crouched in the mud, poking at something with a gloved fingertip.

“Where are we?”

“Section eighty-seven, grid nineteen, focal point sixteen or
seventeen. Approximately.”

Feeling exasperated, Lazlo tried not to sound it as he
manually plugged in the numbers, his geolocator chiming happily. “How do you
know that?”

“I was in this area once, about eight years ago.”

And of course she remembered it. At least she seemed
entirely competent and confident in what she was doing, Lazlo tried to assure
himself. That made one of them. She had now pulled out whatever interested her
and was rinsing it in a puddle of water.

“Are we close to the search coordinates?”

“We’ve been in the middle of them for the last hour.”

And they hadn’t found anything. He would have noticed
something like that, wouldn’t he? “What’s that you’re washing there?”

Then Del looked at him, gray eyes bright. “My guess is some
sort of garnet matrix, but I have no idea of what the inclusions are. There are
a lot of them around here.” She shrugged and pitched the rock back to the
ground.

Taking a drink of water, Lazlo watched her. She was watching
him and looking as if she were trying to understand something as she narrowed
her eyes. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Just wondering if you’re ready to keep going.”

She nodded.

Lazlo walked after her as Del headed into a narrow opening
in the canyon wall, formed by two pieces of dark-red rock that had fallen
against each other. Lazlo wondered if he would be able to fit through it—she
was much more slender than he.

Del slid through with no trouble and told him to toss his
pack through first, then follow. It was an uncomfortably tight squeeze and the
crumbling rocks scraped against his face and body as he pushed his way through.
Lazlo almost didn’t manage past one inclined boulder, but finally did thanks to
vigorous tugs on his outstretched arms by Del, who grinned at him when he
finally emerged on the other side.

She waited to release his arms until he got his boots under
him, then Del made a few moves to straighten his shirt, which was askew. Her
thin fingers brushed over him with little presses and strokes. Lazlo felt
twitchy, as if more than his clothes had been pulled out of place.

“There, not so bad,” Del reassured him with a final pat on
his shoulder.

“Do we have to go back that way?”

“Only if you want to drive back to port in the cart.” She
quirked an eyebrow at him and he envisioned a six-hour hike up, down and around
the looming rock formation they had just crawled under. That wasn’t what he
wanted to do at all.

“Oh I do want to take the cart back. Remind me not to eat
anything before we have to go back through there.”

Del laughed, big jolts of laughter making her shake, and
Lazlo grinned back. He liked it. She was very pretty when she was laughing. Well,
Del was very pretty all of the time, even when she was rooting around in the
mud. So of course a big laugh and shining eyes would make her even more
attractive.

“Don’t worry about it. I can always set up a winch to pull
you if I have to. Let’s go, big guy.” She abruptly stopped walking and he
almost ran into her. “You did apply your antifungals today, didn’t you?”

Lazlo blanked for a moment, too distracted by her head
nearly under his chin to process her words. But he got back on the
conversational track. “Yes I did. Why?”

Nodding with satisfaction, Del pointed to an oily green film
on the rock walls surrounding them. “We’re going to be walking around green-chancre
spores. If you sniff, you’ll smell them—they’re kind of vinegary. But you will
be fine if you took your meds today. And take them tomorrow.”

Fighting back nausea at the memory of the horrific images of
green-chancre infections he’d seen in the mandatory briefing before arriving on
Sayre, Lazlo swallowed and followed Citizen Browen as she continued down the
canyon, staying well away from the damp walls.

Del crouched next to Lieutenant Casta as he fiddled with the
transmitter. They’d been at the top of a slight plateau for the last ten
minutes as he tried to align the antenna, triangulate distant satellite pickups
and get the electronics to cooperate in the humid, dirty surroundings. So far,
he’d tried it seven times with no success. Not that she was counting. Lazlo was
breathing deeply though his nose and clenching his teeth together as he tried
to make minute adjustments to the gadgets. Del would have given up on them long
ago. Actually, she hadn’t bothered with the majority of those devices in years
because they didn’t work most of the time. Expensive too.

Stretching her shoulders, Del contemplated how badly things
had gone that morning. They hadn’t found anything. Not a nut or bolt or broken
bit of resin to even indicate that anyone had ever been in the area, let alone
people who had constructed and then abandoned a storage facility.

She’d thought that signs would be obvious if they were near
the cache—an abandoned trail, cuts in the rock, a trash midden of some sort. All
of those things were in abundance at the other abandoned military sites she
knew. But this section was clear of any human residue—just small, eroded cliff
faces, damp creek beds and wet sand. Non-magnetized sand at that.

It was late in the afternoon and she was ready to suggest
they head back to the cart and return to the port. As far as she could
determine, the area was clear and untouched. Perhaps the military had used this
section for field exercises of some sort but they hadn’t left anything behind
if they had.

“Blast and afterburn,” Casta grumbled and sat back on his
heels. This made his thighs bulge under the close-fitting tan fabric of his
trousers and Del decided to look at the transmitter instead.

“No luck?”

“None.” Lieutenant Casta shook his head, expression hard to
read under his hat, shades and a light coating of dust. He’d been game for
every suggestion she’d made that day—climbing up rock faces, dropping down
between boulders, lifting aside mats of crisp algae and replacing them
carefully. She’d briefly considered asking him to do a headstand to see if he
would, but decided that was mean. “I sent out three unacknowledged pings. There’s
no way of knowing if they got through until we get back and check.”

“That’s all right. Today was kind of a test run anyway. The
other locations we’re going to have to check are much rougher and farther out
than this one. We’re working out the process.”

“Yes, the process that doesn’t seem to include reliable
communication.” Casta sighed and frowned at his transmitter sitting there,
innocently blinking yellow and green. “I don’t know if I can get a more
powerful one from the station. Those are kept locked up for an emergency. I
wonder if the major would consider…” He trailed off, looking out at the plain
below them, his expression changing to curious interest.

“What is it?” Del asked, automatically looking out the same
direction he was. In the distance she saw a plume of dust and just before it, a
tiny cart moving along at a good pace. Strange.

“Citizen Browen, would you expect to see another vehicle out
here?” the lieutenant asked in a slow manner as he kept looking at the tiny
vehicle.

“No,” Del answered without hesitation. There were very few
people on Sayre who traveled outside the borders of the agricultural
operations. She’d never encountered anyone at random this far out.

With a grunt, the lieutenant shut off the transmitter and
turned to her. “Turn your datpad off completely.” He moved to do the same as
she fumbled for the small piece of equipment stored in her shirt pocket for
safekeeping. As she was powering it down, Casta grabbed her arm and pulled her
down flat on the rock, next to him. She complied a bit clumsily, still not sure
what was happening, but starting to grow nervous. With a few efficient
movements, the man lying beside her had a pair of visions in front of his eyes,
tracking the distant cart. With a start, she remembered her own battered set
and pulled them out, bumping her elbow into Lazlo’s side several times as she
struggled.

“Watch it,” he said, twisting against her. “I’m ticklish.”

“You probably shouldn’t tell people about that right off,” Del
replied, finally getting a better view of the cart after some adjustments. Hmm,
she didn’t recognize anything about it but considering how limited her
magnification was, she hadn’t expected much.

“Why not?” Lazlo asked as he shifted again to lie lower on
the rock. This movement squeezed his body against hers more tightly and Del was
sorely tempted to poke him in the ribs a few times.

“Because those inclined to pranks would take advantage.” The
best view Del got was of a newish cart, made for rough work—knobbed tires,
raised undercarriage. She could only make out one person in it, bundled up
against the dust. Lazlo’s leg pressed against hers and she felt all sorts of
hard knobby things he’d stored in his pockets. “I can’t see much with mine. What
do you think?”

“If you think it’s unusual for someone to be out here, then
I suspect someone is trying to find us.”

“Shouldn’t we let them know where we are then?” Del wondered
if it was someone from her family. They all knew it was impossible to reach
someone with a signal—they’d send someone directly. But how would they have
known where to look?

“No, we definitely don’t want to attract his or her
attention.” Casta was still looking through his visions, speaking slowly and
appearing completely relaxed. “I’d say someone is probably on to us.”

“Oh no,” she moaned. “How? I thought you said this was all
undercover.”

“I did, but it’s not surprising that someone has figured
something out. People talk.” Lazlo sounded so calm about it but Del was
anxious. If someone else found the cache, she wouldn’t be paid and she was
counting on that money to pay for a class or two. Maybe even a trip to a
conference.

And if it was Harata or one of his minions out there, she
and her family could be in real trouble. She remembered what had happened to
the woman who had run against him in the last election. A few weeks after
Harata had been sworn in again, her cart was stolen, her home burglarized and
someone had spiked her field’s irrigation system with coolant. She and her
family had lost everything.

“Is that cart heading anywhere we’re going to go?” Lazlo
asked. He stopped looking at the distant cart and stared at her instead. The
idea that someone with nefarious intent was out there didn’t seem to bother him
in the least. But he had all sorts of skills and weapons to rely on. She was
alone and vulnerable to any sort of intimidation.

Del thought rapidly. “Without looking at the maps, my guess
is no. That’s not really the direction we would be going for anything.” She
didn’t dare power up her datpad and check. The mystery cart was close enough to
them to pick up the signal if they were scanning frequencies.

“So if we keep a low profile, no one should notice us?”

“I guess. What if there are others out there?” Del pictured
swarms of searching carts, piloted with menacing figures in black, relentlessly
crisscrossing the blue-lichen fields.

“We’ll just have to keep a really low profile.”

“What, subterranean?”

Then he laughed, big barks of laughter that made her grin in
response. He was a likable guy, this Lieutenant Casta. She wondered what sort
of family had produced him.

“Are we satisfied with our search today?” Lazlo glanced back
at the cart speeding along the horizon and then rolled onto his back and
stretched his body with a sigh. Del wanted to stretch too and relax and bump
into his body a few more times. It had been so intriguingly solid.

“Yes. I saw nothing that looked promising and the scanners
agreed with me.”

“It’s always good when the machines back up our opinions,
isn’t it?” He rolled to a crouch on the rock, looked for the now out-of-sight
cart, then helped her to her feet, both of them making a slight effort to dust
themselves off. It mostly resulted in smearing the sticky mud over even bigger
swathes of fabric. “Where are we going for dinner?”

“What are you talking about?” Del couldn’t quite understand
what he’d just said.

“Dinner, tonight. I’m hungry.” Casta looked at her with an
inquiring quirk of his eyebrows and she felt as if she had lost some sort of
grip on reality.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” He wanted to eat a meal with
her? Why?