“I am so sick of this.” I was struggling to keep my voice down, but the frustration was like a poison in my blood.
“I know, Zeke. She made me promise to say something else. Please don’t be mad at me. She made me promise before she told me what it was.”
I nodded. That was about all I could muster.
“She said you were too late. As usual.” Alice winced as she said the words. Part of me was aware how hard it must be to be tasked with delivering such stinging words to a friend. Part of me was lost in despair. It was all ruined. We were leaving now, with friends dead, nothing accomplished, Tamret going back to live in misery, and Earth in the crosshairs. What had been the point of all of any of this?
There had to be a way to fix it, but I couldn’t see it. Then it occurred to me that maybe I couldn’t see it because it wasn’t there. Maybe not everything could be fixed. It was all messed up, and I wasn’t in the driver’s seat; I was just along for the ride, watching how everything went from bad to worse, powerless to do a thing about it. I’d been foolish to think that somehow I could make events unfold the way I wanted them to.
“I’m sorry, Zeke. She’s angry and she’s frustrated. I know she doesn’t mean it.”
I just shook my head.
“She wouldn’t lash out like that if she didn’t care about you,” Alice said. “She’s hurting too.”
I’d been rubbing my face with frustration, but I suddenly stopped. Tamret was hurting too. I was standing here, feeling sorry for myself, and I realized I was being a selfish jerk. One problem at a time, I told myself.
“Thanks, Alice,” I said, and I went back to my room. Villainic was busy settling himself into his sleeping area, working the blankets under him so he could be all tucked in.
I kicked him. Not as hard as I would have liked, but harder than most people generally want to be kicked. “Get up,” I said.
“Here we go,” Steve observed from across the room.
“Son,” the colonel warned.
He may have said something else, but I wasn’t sure because Villainic was groaning. From me kicking him again.
He was scrambling to get untucked and onto his feet. I got another kick in there before he was standing. “Why are you kicking me, brother?”
“I am not your brother, you idiot,” I said. “I am issuing a formal challenge or whatever to determine Tamret’s fate. I hereby caste-challenge you in the name of the deity of moronic fiancés.”
Villainic looked puzzled. “There is no such deity.”
“I don’t care. You get my point.”
Villainic shook his head. “Your challenge is unorthodox, and I am not obligated to accept it. Besides, I’d be remiss in my duties if somehow I lost and I could no longer protect Tamret.”
“She doesn’t want your protection,” I told him. “She wants to go with me.”
“Of course she doesn’t.”
“You are so blind,” I said, struggling to keep from shouting. “She told me she wants me to take me with her.”
Villainic gave me a sympathetic smile. “Oh, she was just being emotional. Half the time I’m sure she has no idea what she wants, but she certainly does not want to live out her days on an alien world, away from her own kind. No, Zeke, I vowed to care for her, and I shall keep that vow. Please don’t kick me again.”
I watched while he climbed back into his pile of blankets and tucked himself in. That had been my move, my big gesture: getting myself beaten up by an impossibly strong alien. I hadn’t expected to win any challenge. I’d expected to be bloody and bruised in the morning so that Tamret would see that at least I’d tried. But Villainic would not give me even that. I was about to start kicking him again, but Steve and Charles had me by the armpits and were dragging me from the room.
“I don’t think that’s working, mate,” Steve said.
“We would all like to kick him,” Charles added, “but it accomplishes nothing.”
“It’s not over,” Steve told me. “We can keep this from happening. If we all stand against him, there’s nothing Villainic can do. We can keep him from taking her.”
“But we can’t keep her from agreeing to be taken,” I said. “That’s the thing that’s so messed up. In spite of how her people have treated her, she is going to keep her stupid caste vows and stay with him.”
“Tomorrow we shall think of something,” Charles assured me.
They both went back to their blankets. The light went out. I stood in the hall for a long time, thinking, trying to find another angle, another approach, some way to keep Tamret from agreeing to go back to Rarel. At the dinner table she had been glaring at me. I realized too late that she’d wanted me to speak up, to offer her my protection before she reaffirmed her vow or whatever. I’d blown it. That was it, the moment I could have made a difference, and I let it get away, and I was not going to get another chance.
I don’t know how long I stood there. I listened to the others breathing in the darkness, and then to the sounds of snoring. The colonel was particularly loud. Finally I went over to my own blankets in the hopes that unconsciousness would dull the pain a little.
I was not so lucky. It didn’t help that it was so hot in there, which made it impossible for me to relax. I kept envisioning how things were going to play out tomorrow. We would spend five hours riding on an enthusiastic worm, we would reach an abandoned spaceport, and then I would say good-bye to Tamret, this time almost certainly forever. Steve and Charles were good friends to try to convince me that we could turn this around—maybe they actually believed it—but I knew better. Tamret would not break her vow. She was going to voluntarily walk out of my life. This time I wouldn’t have to worry about her being killed or imprisoned or tortured, but I did worry about her being miserable.
As I lay sweating on that uncomfortable floor, endlessly mulling this over, I was suddenly stuck by an urgent need to pee. Too much information, I suppose, but it surprised me because water consumption wasn’t big among the desert folk, and I hadn’t had much since arriving—just enough to keep me hydrated. I’d taken care of business before getting ready for bed, but now my body was telling me that if I didn’t get up and find the toilet right now, I’d have a lot of embarrassing explaining to do in the morning.
I padded out of the room and into the hallway. It was dark, but not completely so, and I remembered my way around well enough. For some reason, though, I found myself stopping. I hadn’t meant to. One minute I’d been creeping along in the dark, and the next I was still. In the kitchen, off the hallway, I heard Racvib and Uolomd talking. I am not the eavesdropping sort, but I heard them speak a name that made me freeze. In spite of the heat.
“Any luck reaching Junup?” Racvib asked.
“No, a sandstorm is interfering with communications,” Uolomd said. “We’ll just have to follow his standing orders. I’ll take them out into the desert tomorrow and dispose of them. They won’t suspect anything until it’s too late. And I’ll have Minti bury them. No one will ever find them.”
“Should we post a guard tonight?” Racvib asked.
“Why bother? If they’re worried about us, they’ll just slip out and try to find the ‘spaceport,’ which means they’ll wander around until they die of thirst.”
“I can’t believe they actually believed that spaceport story,” Racvib said.
“Junup did tell us they were simple,” Uolomd said. “But to believe that there is a functional spaceport out here after all these centuries? What a bunch of dimwits.”
“Still, it’s good fun to trick them into their own demise, isn’t it?”
“I love being evil. It’s pretty much the best.”
I no longer needed to pee.
• • •
I went back to the room and waited until I heard them go to their respective rooms. Then I waited at least another hour to make sure they were asleep. That’s when I got up and shook Steve awake. Shaking didn’t accomplish anything, so I poked him in the side, hoping that Ish-h
i were ticklish in the same places as humans. They are, by the way. Also, I can’t recommend waking an Ish-hi that way.
When I picked myself up, rubbing my arm to make sure it was not broken, Steve began to sit up. “Sorry about that. Reflex. Why are you waking me up, anyhow?”
I told him what I’d overheard.
Steve was aghast. “But Uolomd is cute,” he protested. “And the food is delicious.”
“Be that as it may,” I said, “they are working for Junup. There is no spaceport, and they mean to kill us, so I’m thinking that it might be a good idea to sneak off now.”
“The others aren’t going to like it,” he told me.
“They’re going to like being dead even less.”
“Fair point.”
We began the process of waking everyone up and explaining the situation.
“This is disappointing,” Colonel Rage said.
“Better to know than not,” Charles said. “It looks like the Hidden Fortress is back on the menu.”
“But we agreed it was a bad idea,” Villainic said. “I thought we agreed to escape instead.”
“It’s hard to escape on a ship that doesn’t exist,” the colonel said.
“How do we even know this is true?” Villainic asked, his ears shooting back. His amber fur grew a little puffy too, like he was trying to make himself look bigger. “We only have Zeke’s word for it, and he’s been attempting to convince us to search for this fortress all along. He could be manipulating us.”
“If you were one of us,” Charles said, “you would know better than to say that.”
Villainic shook his head. “You’re right. I’m sorry, brother.” He reached out to pat me on the arm.
“We’re not brothers,” I said, shaking him off.
Villainic shook his head sadly. “Whether you like it or not, that is exactly what we are.”
I didn’t want to deal with Villainic’s irrational nonsense now. There was too much at stake. I knew that Steve could move more stealthily than anyone else in our group, so I sent him to wake the girls. Besides, I wanted to keep an eye on Villainic. We had not yet discovered how Junup had learned of our plans, and I still suspected Villainic of being a spy. There was no way I was going to let him be alone, even for a minute, until we were out of there.
Finally, when the girls were awake and brought up to date, and we had collected our things, we slipped out into the night to search for the Hidden Fortress.
• • •
With only the bush alien’s map to guide us, we headed out into the desert. It was dark but quite cool, making it the best time to travel. Above us a few wispy clouds wandered by, and past that the great, ringed gas giant hung in the sky with its swirling mass of colors. I took a moment to admire its strange beauty, and then I got back to the business of trying not to get killed. We needed to put as much distance between ourselves and Uolomd as possible. Once she discovered we were gone, she’d be after us with her sandworm, and then we’d be in serious trouble.
Just as the sun was coming up, we saw a series of rocky outcrops with a wedge in between. The map indicated that this was the beginning of the entrance to the fortress. It was a good three miles in the distance, but I figured we could make it there before it got too hot. I was moderately optimistic until I saw a wake in the sand behind us, which I recognized from the previous day.
Charles saw it too. “Worm sign!” he called, pointing.
We ran.
I had no idea how fast worms could move when they were going at top speed. I also had no idea if we could survive running in the desert, with no time to stop for water, but we had to keep going long enough to make it to safety. I didn’t know a lot of things, but I knew I didn’t want us to fall back into Junup’s hands.
I heard the rumbling behind us, and the scrape of sand on sand, but I was not stopping. The rocks were just ahead of us. We could make it. Once we reached them, we would be safe. Safe from the worm, at least. Junup had people here, which meant there were traps we hadn’t imagined. I couldn’t let myself think about that, though. I just had to keep moving.
Running in desert sand, while carrying all your stuff, and with the sun creeping up behind you, is really a great workout. The Forbidden Zone fitness plan was going to make me a lot of money, provided Junup didn’t get his goaty hands on me. It was hard to work up a lot of speed, and even harder to keep it. With sweat stinging my eyes, I turned back to see the disturbance under the sand gaining on us.
We had maybe half a mile to go when the sand in front of us began to swirl. Sand sprayed upward like a geyser, and the giant worm emerged ahead of us, massive and terrifying. On the saddle, a figure in dingy robes, presumably Uolomd, turned to face us.
She unwound the layers around her face. “Where are you going?” she demanded. “Why did you run off like that?”
“Give us a break, Uolomd,” I said. “We know.”
“Know what?”
“This is pointless,” Colonel Rage said. “The longer we stand here arguing, the longer she has to call in reinforcements.”
“’Fraid that’s true,” Steve said. He had taken out his PPB pistol, and now he fired off a single blast, stunning Uolomd. She was strapped into her saddle, I suppose for the purposes of traveling through loose sand, so there was no danger of her falling off the creature. Instead she slumped forward and dangled along the side of the worm.
The worm. That was one thing Steve hadn’t considered when he shot Uolomd.
For a terrifying moment the worm remained still, fixing us with its endless wriggling feelers. Then it cried out, “Friend hurt! Oh, the bright light hurt friend!”
The worm reared up, turning from bus to skyscraper in an instant. It was going to crush us or eat us or whatever it was that worms did to beings they didn’t like.
“Friend hurt!” it cried at us.
None of us spoke.
The worm writhed from side to side, like it had been stung. “Friend hurt! Oh, friend is hurt. Going home! Taking friend home!” It then rose into the air and flopped down, facing the other direction, heading back the way it had come.
“Given our track record,” the colonel said, “that worked out surprisingly well.”
We headed toward the pass.
• • •
By midmorning the sun was obscured by one of the mountains, and we had the advantage of shade, but we still had a ways to go. There was not a whole lot of talking going on, maybe because of the heat and our perpetual thirst, but also because tensions were high. We trudged on, the sun high above us, the air still, the great gas giant making its way across the station’s dome.
That night we camped in an outcropping in the midst of the rocks. There was still no sign of renewed pursuit. The desert grew cold at night, but we dared not make a fire. I layered extra clothes on top of myself, using a couple of T-shirts as makeshift gloves to keep my hands warm.
We woke at dawn, and after a silent breakfast of rations we were on our feet and marching farther through the pass. At about noon we found a small cave, as marked on the map. It was about five feet wide, with a ceiling maybe eight feet above us, and we were all grateful to get out of the heat. We stepped in, generating floating flashlights from our data bracelets, and made our way farther inside. It was more of a passage than a cave, and we wound our way through, enjoying the cool and taking comfort from the distant, tinny sound of dripping water. The cave was kind of beautiful. The walls were lined with glittering mineral deposits of blue and pink.
We followed a winding path for maybe two hundred feet, and then the cave widened into a cavern about as broad and tall as a house. At the far end of it, a downward staircase had been carved into the stone.
“I think we go that way,” Steve volunteered. His voice echoed throughout the cavern.
We began our descent and moved steadily into the mountain for the rest of the afternoon, taking the occasional food-and-water break. No one said it, but we all had the same worries. What if this path went
nowhere? What if there was no Hidden Fortress, or if it no longer existed or the way to gain access was blocked? Why had no one ever returned? Of course, now I began to wonder if that was true. Uolomd had, after all, not been honest with us about other things. Maybe Urch, or someone who looked like him, had never come this way at all. Maybe no one had.
We spent another night camped out, this time in a dusty stone passageway leading off the stairs. We needed to find a place where no one would be in danger of tumbling to their doom in the night. Here we felt less shy about making a fire, and in the flickering light I watched Tamret, who purposely kept her gaze away from me. I wanted to go to her, to talk to her, to apologize for missing my chance to save her, but I didn’t know if I could find the words.
• • •
The next day we resumed our journey. About halfway through the morning, we began to hear a rhythmic pounding, like the slamming of a machine. I didn’t know if that was good news or bad, but at least it was something.
Then the passageway opened into a great chamber illuminated by an eerie iridescent moss. A winding staircase led down the side of the rock wall, and below us, gleaming in the dim light, was a great metal structure, a nearly featureless silver cube sitting in the midst of a sprawling cavern. In the dim light it was hard to be sure how large it was, but I guessed it was at least a quarter mile long on each side.
“Could be a fortress,” Steve said.
“It’s hidden,” Alice agreed.
“Looks like a Borg cube,” Charles said worriedly.
So I felt pretty sure we’d found the Hidden Fortress. We’d also found the source of the thumping. We didn’t see them at first, but there they were in the distance: giant machines, maybe robots or mechs, with twisted, asymmetrical limbs, stomping around, looking a whole lot like they would crush anything that tried to make it to the entrance. There must have been thirty of them that we could see. Given that they were eight feet tall, nightmarish in appearance, and predisposed to stomping, I had the feeling they might not be as friendly as we would have wished.
“The giant mechanical monstrosities could be a problem,” I said quietly.