Rivers in the Desert

  Norven 25, 1294 (Continued):

  It made me very nervous, this idea of experimentation. I had no idea what all this would entail. Apparently, they captured twenty-three other girls of childbearing age, so I was just one of many. In fact, I believe I am the youngest. After Teuchan was done explaining these things, he gave the guards a gentle order to unhand me and only restrain me if I tried to run. Then he had them take me to a room where I could wash up and put on clean — if simple and odd — clothes. After this, and some much-appreciated food, I was sent off in another carriage to a different town. I’m still riding in the cab, sweating and nervous of my future. I only pray that my fortune improves and I can see my parents again soon.

  — From Lhinde’s Diary

  I felt like a new woman after a hot shower. Not quite the same as a hot soak at Mydia’s palace, but people on Gaea weren’t very fond of baths, particularly the ones who built rebel emergency bases. I’d spent most of my life as an orphan, anyway, somewhere between peasant and urchin as the class structure back in Nytaea went.

  Only problem was finding some clothes now.

  The men were busy fiddling with computers and communication instruments as I poked my head out of the shower room, wearing only one of their strange, thin towels. Ccal glanced up and made the universal shushing gesture. After another minute of trying to get Bddo’s attention, I gave up and stepped into the room barefoot, heading toward the back. There should be a door . . . ah, there it was. I kicked open one labeled “Locker.”

  Inside, I found rows and rows of, well, lockers, as well as many jumpsuits hanging on the far wall. Exactly what I was looking for. After rummaging through multiple sections, I found what could pass for underwear and pants. Far bigger than my size, but thank the auroras for elastic technology. What kind of fiber was all this stuff, anyway? Some kind of synthetic plastic material, as far as I knew. Nothing the Hellebes made seemed to be remotely natural. After donning a shirt that was supposed to be form-fitting, I made myself a makeshift hair tie and called it good enough. There were no mirrors to check myself in, but then I wasn’t Mydia . . . I could manage.

  Wandering back outside, I found Bddo poring through the rations shelves whilst Ccal and the captain sent messages back and forth to HQ. “Hey, there you are!” Bddo said, coming over to take me by the shoulder. “Took you long enough. The suit fits you just fine.”

  It definitely did not; I was the one wearing it, so I should know. But I simply replied, “How’s the communication going?”

  “They got a hold of HQ and are filling them in.”

  “So, what’s our plan?”’

  “Whatever Cap says it is,” Bddo answered. “Here, want one?” He handed me a foil-wrapped object, long and flat.

  “What is it?”

  “Dunno. Some kind of protein bar. I think it’s made mostly of meat.”

  I unwrapped the bar and sniffed it. “Is this for humans?”

  He shrugged, popping his own bar in his mouth and crunching on the whole thing at once. If it was meat, why did it crunch?

  I followed suit, jamming the entire bar into my mouth. It was difficult to chew, being that it was of indeterminant age and packaged to last a lifetime. The taste was less than pleasant at first, becoming still less so as I chewed and leaving an even worse aftertaste. I made a face, but Bddo simply gave me a thumbs-up as though he enjoyed his.

  “Hey, you two!” Zent called from his seat at the comms table. “HQ is officially expecting us.”

  “When do we leave?” Bddo asked.

  “ASAP.”

  I sighed. “That means no time for a nap, right?”

  Bddo arched his back, grunting as he stretched. “’Fraid not. Believe me, I wish.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we filed into the docking room, which led down to the underground river. The chamber was lit by strip lights reaching out to the water’s edge. Metal stairs rang out hollow tones as we descended toward the docks. The water flowed surprisingly quickly. The channel was perhaps twenty feet across. A handful of sleek, metal watercraft floated by the bank, chained to the docks. Zent approached the one nearest us, opening the door and trying the ignition. He grunted. “Dead. Ccal?”

  “Told ya, Cap.” Ccal handed him the spare battery he had brought, and the captain deftly removed the old one from the compartment. After this, it turned on with a hum and a whine that changed pitch before steadying out. The flick of a switch turned on the boat’s powerful floodlights. “The battery is electric,” Ccal explained to me. “These things run on both electric and Geothermic power. Water doesn’t conduct Geothermic power very well.”

  We got in after stowing our supplies in the back compartment and unchaining the vessel. Zent engaged the Geoelectric engine and the boat zipped into motion. The tunnel through which the river flowed was only perhaps six feet higher than our heads, tight enough to give me a faint sense of claustrophobia. The echo of the boat’s rear motors droning behind us was odd and disorienting, though not overly loud.

  Bddo punched me on the shoulder lightly—for a Hellebes—and grinned. “Bet you’ve never ridden a speedboat underground before, have ya?”

  “Uh . . . no? But there are a lot of things I’ve done recently that I never dreamed I would.” I snorted. “Especially back on Mani. Kaen would flip if he knew I was having so much fun.”

  “Who’s Kaen?” Bddo asked.

  “My friend. We grew up together since childhood. We . . . used to live in an orphanage. A place for children who have no other home. You do know what children are, right?” He nodded. “The orphanage—well, it burned to the ground, and I was left with Kaen, his little sister Mandrie, and Phoebe.”

  “Phoebe is . . . another female name, yes?”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I nodded. “We have a lot of females on my planet. You would have quite a time looking for a . . .” I cut off with a small gasp. “Sorry. That’s probably mean to tease you like that, since you guys don’t have any way to find a mate on your world . . .”

  An uncomfortable silence followed my words. Finally, Zent said, “Lyn, perhaps you don’t know this, but most Hellebes are sterile.”

  “Oh.” I was suddenly very glad for the poor lighting, so that Ccal and Bddo couldn’t see my face redden. “So . . . like, from birth? Or do they . . . y’know . . .”

  “From incubation,” Ccal said, turning his head. “Hellebes can’t reproduce naturally. Just the way it works.”

  “Oh,” I repeated in a soft voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Truth be told, I wasn’t sure how I hadn’t heard that already in the Haccolces labs amidst all the tests the doctors were running on their precious little Mother Heiress. I did, however, know that Hellebes were not exactly born, per se, which explained Ccal’s slight hesitation when I said the word birth. Rather, they were formed in some sort of human production facilities in . . . Chronala? One of the nine cities. I recalled the scientists talking about it.

  As I considered the matter, my significance in the world seemed to increase. Hellebes can’t reproduce naturally . . . Suddenly, it made sense why these men were so unconcerned about my modesty. They probably couldn’t even understand. What would it be like to grow up in a world where you knew you could never have a progeny to carry on your legacy? No family, no siblings?

  We rode on in silence for a while, and I stared hypnotically at the black water as we cut through it, spraying up a neat wake behind us. We were heading downstream, which meant . . . a larger body of water somewhere ahead, unless we were getting off sooner. It was still hard for me to grasp the way water worked, as Mani didn’t have nearly as much as Gaea. On Mani, I had been on a boat once, and only once, on one of the four rivers that ran from the single lake on my home continent. From the lake to the edge of the world.

  “So where is HQ?” I asked after a while.

  “Top secret,” Ccal said.

  “Like, the top of the top,” Bddo added. “Of secret.” This elicited a chuckle from Zent in front of me.

  “Where do all rivers flow?” Zent asked.

  “The . . . sea? Eventually?”

  He nodded. “That’s where HQ is. We might arrive in two or three more hours. Try to get some sleep in the meantime.”

  I did as he suggested, shifting to lean against the side door, propping my feet up on Bddo’s tree trunk legs. Being the shortest, I had the most room, and I was going to use it. Before long, the hum of the engine and the steady rocking motion put my heavy eyes to sleep.

  ??

  “Lyn?”

  It was White, unsurprisingly. I blinked as I stared out over the vast pale field that was my Vault, making to stand but then realizing I already was. “Didn’t . . . realize I’d fallen asleep.”

  “Mm-hmm. You did,” she said helpfully.

  This was my subconscious. This was what I had to deal with.

  “And . . .”

  “Well, you’re obviously totally beat from all that Geokinetic training, so you need your sleep, dummy!”

  ??

  I woke to Bddo poking me. “Sit up. We need to put up the canopy.”

  “We have a canopy on this thing?” I mumbled, pulling my legs down and my elbow off the door. A brief look around showed me that we were already out on the ocean. Not on the shore, but the ocean itself. That explained the faint spray misting my face. Water stretched infinitely in every direction. The shore was a long way away already. Where are we heading . . .?

  Zent hit a button, and a canopy slid up from its clever concealment in the rear, raising up in sections with glass plates in the front to form a windshield.

  “Plus, you might want to see this,” Bddo said.

  Zent hit a button on the controls, and we slowly began to submerge. “Here we go.”

  I glanced around in equal parts nervousness and wonder as the ship dove into the water. The floodlights illuminated only a small portion of the milky blackness beneath the surface, giving an illusion of infinite depth. The captain continued to pilot us downward at a low angle. The ship’s navigation panel showed that we were nearing the destination, which appeared to be both in front of and below us. Now it all made sense, how the Red Horizon’s base of operations had stayed hidden for this long—they were stationed far below the ocean. Genius.

  After another minute, it began to fade into view: first the lights, surrounding the base in a massive ring and blinking from towers. Then the wall and shield dome, much like that of the city of Haccolces, except that this shield was blue, not red, fitting with the underwater theme a bit better. I could only wonder how strong the shield had to be in order to keep the base safe from hundreds of feet of water pressure. Was the shield responsible for that?

  “Welcome to Red Horizon HQ,” Bddo said. “Didn’t expect this, did you?”

  I shook my head in amazement.

  Zent picked up his microphone and said, “327 to base, 327 to base, this is Captain Zent, requesting permission to dock.”

  A moment later, a reply came: “Captain Zent, welcome back. Proceed to dock.”

  As we descended toward the front wall of the base, one of five bays opened, revealing a chamber just wide and deep enough to comfortably fit our vessel. Zent expertly guided us in, and as soon as we landed, the doors closed behind us and air hissed as the underwater airlock began to equalize the pressure in the room. Once it was finished, the far doors opened, and we were able to drift into a small docking bay.

  Zent surfaced the vehicle and made his way over to one of the docks, letting down the canopy. After we all got out and grabbed our luggage, a mechanical arm reached down from a beam spanning the high ceiling and grabbed our boat, slotting it into one space among many along the outer wall. A convenient way to store many boats at once. The ones currently in docking ranged from smaller to larger, and some even appeared to be well armed.

  “All right,” Zent said, taking me by the shoulder. “You ready for this, kid?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so.”

  We entered the main complex through a tall door that slid both ways like the airlocks. Inside, we were greeted by two Hellebes of imposing presence, wearing formal suits emblazoned with an eagle holding an axe and a spear—the symbol of the Red Horizon. One man was extraordinarily tall, close to seven feet by Legaleian standards, with close-cropped blonde hair and squinty eyes, while the more normal sized Hellebes bore a jagged beard and a disgruntled frown.

  “So,” said the frowny one in my direction with a similarly displeased emphasis, “You are the Mother Heiress. I am called Getts.”

  I wonder where he Getts all his attitude . . .

  The tall man made a surprisingly polite bow and said in a more pleasant, if stuffy, tone: “And I am Vass. We are the Directors here at the Red Horizon. It’s a pleasure.” He stepped forward and reached out a long arm.

  I took his hand and shook it, trying to ignore the fact that my slender hand was like a baby’s in his. “Likewise, sir.”

  Vass looked up at Zent. “Good work, Captain. Corporal Ccal, Corporal Bddo.”

  The two men saluted their leaders sharply, but Vass dismissed them with a wave.

  Getts gave a loud harumph! and said, “Captain Zent, we request that you meet with us at once to discuss our direction from here.”

  Zent gave an almost inaudible sigh. “I was expecting as much.” He gave me a curt nod. “We’ll be back, Lyn. Boys, want to show her to the lounge?”

  Ccal and Bddo led me down a hall toward the right while Zent departed with the two Directors for the Board Room, wherever that was. I’d have to remember not to call those two Tall Tom and Skinny Sam. Although those spots were vacant for any fitting rebel leaders . . . ugh, what was wrong with my sense of humor nowadays?