“That’s what we said last time.”
“Last time,” I remind her, “Lament had a hunch about the cave raptors, and he wasright. I know you don’t believe another unsanctioned mission is worth the risk, but what if it is?”
Vera pulls in her lips.
“Come on, Vera.” I throw my arm around Lament’s shoulder (he splutters in surprise) and give Vera my biggest, most hopeful eyes. “Do it for us?”
I’m banking on the fact that Vera won’t be able to say no to the sight of Lament and me working together, and I’m right. She gives me a look like she knows what I’m doing, but ends up throwing up her hands and exclaiming, “Why can’t I ever say no to you two?” I release Lament’s shoulder and beam. Lament looks a little off-balance but pleased. Vera glances at Jester, who gives a nod. She just shakes her head. “Let’s go hunt some space mist.”
17
“You,” Vera tells Lamentand me as she starts up the split-wing, “are going to owe me for this.”
Jester, Lament, and I have all piled into Vera’s Sky Runner. It took more than a little coaxing to convince Lament to ride along with us rather than travel separately in his skimmer, but apparently he’s more likely to fly with others if he’s not doing the actual flying. Not that he’s coming quietly. He made an enormous fuss over Vera’s takeoff procedures, admonishing her for forgoing her preflight checklist and, in his words, “prioritizing convenience over convention.” Then he started in on me for the way I was buckling my safety harness, slapping my hands away to tighten the straps himself. He even had a go at Jester for forgetting his anti-reflection visor spray before Vera snapped, in frankly frightening tones, “You can nag the rest of us all you want, but leave Jest out of this.”
Now, Vera flips a few final controls, pulls the split-wing’s throttle, and up we go. “See?” she says sweetly as the land shrinks beneath us. “No checklist needed.”
“That’s a gross overgeneralization.” Lament has his arms crossed, his shoulder wedged against the door. His mouth has turned perilously close to a pout. “Just because you got us off the ground doesn’t mean we’re in theclear. The checklist is there for a reason. Do you want to lose a wing before we get to Mount Kilmon?”
“We’re not going to lose awing.”
“You could. If there’s a loose bolt—”
“There isn’t.”
“Or your radar system malfunctions—”
“Itwon’t.”
I peer out the window as they continue to squabble, watching our shadow slide over farmlands and fields and wide, gray rivers. It’s all so typically Venthros: green and brown, wet and dry, like swirls on a marble. Sparse, mostly. Wild and unpopulated. Mount Kilmon sits way in the distance, a massive, singular presence, and though I can’t see it from here, I know the village Longji—and Master Ira’s school—is sprawled somewhere in its foothills.
If Ran Doc Min is right and Mount Kilmon spews poisonous gas across the planet during its next eruption, Master Ira will be among the victims.
Is that what Professor Morton meant back on Skyhub? Isthatthe threat to the Master’s life?
Vera tips her controls to bring the Sky Runner low over a forest, close enough that the trees shuffle in our wake. Mount Kilmon looms larger the closer we fly, its ashen face stark in the light of the setting sun.
“What are those?” Vera asks, pointing to a row of large metal cylinders visible at the volcano’s base.
“Heat collectors,” I reply.
Vera glances back at me. “Oh?”
“That’s how the people of Venthros capture the energy needed to power the planet.” I strain for a better look, but we’re still too far to really see any details. “Every nine years, the collectors trap heat from Mount Kilmon’s eruption and transfer it to Venthros’s Grid. It all happens within a matter of hours. It has to, because eventually the lava reaches the units and submerges them. It doesn’t destroy the collectors—they’re made of magma-resistant alloy—but it does cut off their ability to transfer power. Once the lava cools, the collectors are dug out, and the cycle starts again.”
There’s a silence. I realize too late that Vera’s question was likely intended for Jester, since he’s the Sixth’s intelligence officer with access to the Legion’s knowledge repository, or maybe even for Lament, given he’s the resident know-it-all.
“Wow,” Vera finally says. “How do you know all that?”
“Oh, um—”
An alarm on Vera’s dashboard starts beeping furiously.
Air quality warning, Jester says.Unknown fumes detected.
Vera pulls the split-wing into a hover. We’ve reached the point where the trees give way to open grassland, which slopes into a valley and then back up toward the volcano. Vera flips some levers on her dash (no idea what they do, but it looks complicated and official) before tossing Jester a look. “Can you pull up the map?”
Jester goes still for a second, concentrating on the image inside his visor.I’ve got it.
