“So you complain when they get involved, and then you complain when they don’t get involved.”
Hendric snickered from his place by the console, and Vira shot him a look.
“Landing in five,” Hendric said, losing the smile and turning back to his screen.
Vira murmured into her comm set again, and they set down in a whirl of sand.
From the angle of the sun, it looked like mid-morning, and she’d left Larga Ways at dusk, which meant her day was going to be never-ending.
The runner must have been responsible for the sandstorm, rather than the wind, because after they landed the view cleared and settled, and Fee could see the sienna red of the Balcoan desert stretching out in front of them.
She remembered it all too well. The moisture sucking dry heat, the long, flexible lizards called friens that had a poisonousbite and an attitude problem. The Tecran. And most frightening of all, the grahudi. The native predator of Huy, a planet within the Fitalian’s borders, that had scared the living daylights out of her.
She knew everyone thought it was dead, but she hadn’t seen it meet its end, and if something could survive in the harsh conditions of the desert, that thing could.
“Did any of the animals the Tecran were storing in the facility survive?” Fee asked as Hendric shut off the engines.
“None were found. If any did make it out, they’re dead by now,” Vira said.
Let’s hope.
Imogen had told her a chip had been embedded in the grahudi by the Fitali, and it had gone silent after Eazi had blown the Tecran base up. So it was highly likely it really was gone.
No need to borrow trouble, she told herself as she was unclipped from the chair. There was enough here to worry about without a grahudi in the mix.
She had a feeling she’d been brought along as a sort of Class 5 expert, which was strange. She wondered what had happened to the expert they must have had originally, but she had to admit Vira wasn’t wrong in seeing her that way. And they had the threat of a Garmman strike on Larga Ways to control her.
But the flip side of that was there was little benefit to them in hurting her. The thought steadied her as she dropped down onto a small landing pad.
The crater Eazi had made when he’d blown up the base was still here, she saw, but it had been reinforced on the sides, creating a perfect space to build a spherical ship.
Bart prodded her forward to a set of stairs that led down into the crater in a series of sharp turns, with a landing at each twist.
As she started down she saw the same type of framework as Paxe’s new ship below, a skeleton of metal covered with Balcoans strapped into harnesses, riveting and welding.
How the hell were they going to launch this into space? she wondered.
“You’re building a Class 5 so you can play in it on the ground?” she asked.
Bart gave a laugh. “No. Why do you think we have the Garmman battleship at the ready? We’ve reached the point where it has to be lifted up. Any more weight and the battleship won’t manage it.”
Fee shaded her eyes and looked over at Kyber’s Arm, then back at the ship. “Okay.”
“I see you think otherwise.” Bart looked back at her, and his expression was slightly supercilious. “Kyber’s Arm is a complication, but it’s moving away at the moment. In two days’ time it’ll be the furthest it ever is from this point. The Garmman say that’s the only safe window.”
“Paxe would be almost done with the outer shell by now if he’d gotten all of this as promised.” They had reached the bottom of the crater, and Fee looked up at the frame, feeling tiny beside it.
“He only got what he did get to stop him from realizing we were never going to give him what he had ordered.” Bart led the way to a door set in the reinforced crater wall and opened it up.
Cool air wafted out, and Fee was happy to step inside. She was already sweating from the short walk from the runner.
She turned to look behind her, but Vira and the other two were nowhere in sight. They had stayed to shut off the runner, but she thought they had started down the stairs after her and Bart.
Bart closed the door, shutting them into a wide corridor that looked like it encircled the whole crater, curving to the right and left.
There was a waiting area, with chairs and a long couch up against the far wall, a water dispenser, and some plants.
Someone had tried to make it look like the foyer of a business.
