Welcome back to Earthrise! We are now on our regular schedule, free on Tuesdays, with Thursday and Saturday available if donations or subscriptions that week go over $15 per episode. You can catch up on existing episodes, donate, or set up a subscription here! And now, on to the story:
Her Instruments, Book 1
Episode 48
Two hours later Sascha set the Earthrise down on a world marked as “Selebra” on their star charts with no more fanfare than, Reese imagined, a puff of frost at the landing struts.
“I guess the pirates weren’t interested in us,” the Harat-Shar said on his way to suit up.
“I still think they’re waiting for us to do all the heavy lifting,” Reese said. “Meet us in Bay Five.”
“Right.”
Bryer had already opened the interior airlock door when she arrived, revealing a world of ice through the window… ice and bleak darkness.
“We’ve got lamps, don’t we?” Kis’eh’t asked, rummaging through their supplies.
“The Earthrise has emergency lighting, yes,” Reese said, standing on the airlock ledge and staring at the frozen world.
The Glaseah padded up next to her. After glancing at Reese, she peered through the window. “There,” she said, pointing. “That dot is Demini.”
Reese said nothing.
“You forgot to buy us lanterns,” Kis’eh’t said.
“Think of it as a challenge,” Reese said.
The Glaseah shook her head and headed back into the bay, calling, “If you’ve got lamps or lanterns or personal lights, you’ll want to go get them.”
Reese rubbed her forehead. She should have realized Selebra was far enough away from Demini Star to not have a day but celestial mechanics wasn’t her strongest subject. She hated planets. Give her the clean, broad plane of space any day. Or even the calm nothingness of folded Well-space. At least the blood-cursed rock didn’t have a grabby hold… gravity here was even lighter than Mars.
“Rock-climbing ice cliffs in the dark,” Sascha said cheerfully. He had already pulled his thermal suit’s hood over his head and ears. “It’s the newest frontier in sports!”
“We’ll be fine,” Reese said, turning from the forbidding vista and joining them at the piles of backpacks and supplies. She hunted through them until she found the ship’s single telegem, which she affixed to her ear before dropping her mask around her neck. “We’ll just have to take it slowly.”
“I’m all for slow,” Sascha said, shouldering his pack and brandishing an ice pick. “Ready when you are!”
“Stop waving that before you put out someone’s eye,” Reese said.
“Awww.”
“Don’t mind her,” Kis’eh’t said. “She’s just grumpy because she forgot that planets don’t automatically have day and night just because they’re planets.”
“Wouldn’t that be convenient?”
Bryer rumbled.
“Is he laughing?” Sascha asked.
“Augh!” Reese exclaimed. “Let’s just get going. Bryer, wheel the boxes out to the base of the cliff. Sascha, you and I are following him. We’ll call when it’s time to lower the boxes.”
“Understood,” Hirianthial said.
Reese pulled the suit up over the back of her head, catching a few of her beaded braids in the collar and headed into the airlock. Sascha and Bryer followed her. They did suit checks and mask seal checks before closing the interior door. Once outside, Reese paused to let Bryer pass her, pulling the boxes on sleds. She waited for her agoraphobia to erupt, but having a bubble of air of her own and a suit that hugged her with her own body warmth, she couldn’t quite believe she was outside. She couldn’t even hear the crunch of her footsteps on the ice. With a shrug, Reese followed Sascha and Bryer to the base of the cliff, where she and the Harat-Shar performed safety checks on the climbing harness and ropes.
Bryer stopped beside them and ruffled his feathers. Unlike the suits made for the rest of the bipedals, the arms on his suit only hugged the bare parts. Long spars stretched from the edges into the feathers, warming them within some kind of shield Reese wasn’t enough of an engineer to understand. It looked like magic to her and was probably as astronomically expensive.
“Ready?” she asked him through the suit intercoms after double-checking his harness.
He nodded and took the end of the rope, flexing knife-like talons on the end of his feet that the suit only barely sheathed. She waited for him to trudge away—surely he needed a running start?—but he simply stood between her and Sascha, staring at a fixed point near the top of the cliff.
Then with a muffled rattle of feathers, he simply leaped into the air, wings flaring bright gold just before they passed out of range of their lanterns.
“Wow,” Sascha said, the intercom placing him much closer than he was actually standing.
They could no longer see the Phoenix, only hear his wings beating the air, great metallic thrashes that penetrated the suit’s insulated cover. Reese had never heard anything like it.
The rope tumbled into view. Reese tugged on it, then yanked as hard as she could. It held.
“Looks good. Let’s go.”
Halfway up the cliff, Sascha asked, “Captain?”
“What?”
“What do you think’s so valuable about these crystals anyway?”
“They’re art objects? I don’t know. I didn’t ask any questions. I just took the money.”
“Rich people are strange.”
“Yeah,” Reese said. “I hope that’s all it is.”
At the top of the cliff they stopped to rub feeling back into aching muscles before hauling up the boxes. It wasn’t until all three boxes had safely arrived that Reese turned toward their goal, set a-fire by the light of their lanterns. The top of the rise was encrusted with long columnar spikes, faceted so sharply they seemed to cut wounds that bled bright red onto their planes. Eye-watering blues and shocking purples flickered in the corners of the crystals, broken beams of light fractured against their edges… hundreds of them, some as high as her own waist.
“Blood and Freedom,” Reese whispered.
“Nice,” Bryer agreed, an observation that caused both Reese and Sascha to start.
“Seems a pity to have to hack at them,” Sascha said.
“Yeah, well, that’s why we’re here,” Reese said. “Let’s get to it.”
Bryer opened one of the boxes, withdrawing the three pairs of tongs. He took one and applied himself to the nearest specimen with his customary detachment.
Reese shrugged, took up the second pair and went to work. It took her several tries to figure out how to use them to apply enough pressure on the narrow bases of the crystals to separate them from the ground, and her muscles ached by the time she’d cut a half dozen.
“We should have brought lunch,” Sascha muttered.
“Fill the boxes and you can eat,” Reese said, bringing her armload to the first and setting them carefully inside. The instructions had included a stacking diagram and a scale to weigh each specimen. There was nothing her employer hadn’t thought of… excepting the pirates.
The day—night?—wore on and her arms and hands throbbed from her labors, but the boxes filled until at last Bryer closed the last one. Reese tapped her ship telegem.
“All right. We’re ready.”
“On our way,” Kis’eh’t said to the intercom and set aside her cards. “She’s just in time to save me. You’re too good at this game.”
“It’s luck,” Hirianthial said.
The Glaseah snorted and gathered the brightly colored cards before sliding them into the box. “You never say that about playing Pantheon.”
He laughed and stood. “Right. Iley might show up and laugh at you.”
“Better the Tam-illee deities than the Harat-Shariin,” Kis’eh’t said, sealing her parka. “I notice there’s no Eldritch god or goddess in the deck.”
“Of course not,” Hirianthial said, grinning at her. “That would be telling.”
She laughed. “Let’s go take care of Reese’s boxes.”
They suited up and trotted to the base of the cliff and squinted up into the dark. Kis’eh’t shone her lantern up the wall and spotted the bottom of the first box. “I’ve got the rope. You steady the box when it gets in reach. Your reach, not mine.”
He chuckled.
Inch by inch the box lowered into view until finally he could stretch up and tickle the corner with a gloved finger. A few moments later and he could flatten his palm against the bottom, so he did.
The hair along his neck rose. He shivered.
“Cold?” Kis’eh’t asked.
“No,” Hirianthial said. “Just a reaction.” He steadied the box as Kis’eh’t position the sled under it, then guided it onto the bed. “I’ll just take this to the lock.”
“All right.”
He pushed the box back to the Earthrise, leaving it just outside the airlock, before going back for the second. By the time the third hove into view and settled onto the sled, he had dismissed the chill.
“I’ll wait for Reese to get down,” Kis’eh’t said. “I know you want to get back to where it’s warm.”
“I wouldn’t mind it,” Hirianthial said with a smile.
All three boxes fit in the airlock, though there was little room to spare. Hirianthial sealed the external door and watched what little atmosphere existed on Selebra flush out and the Earthrise’s warm air fill it. The sigh of relief escaped him before he could stop it, and it was nice to be able to hear it properly with the mask off.
He dragged all three boxes into the bay before stripping off his gloves, then crouched in front of the first to check the seal.
The moment his fingers lit on the box’s edge the shivering returned. He observed the symptoms in himself with clinical interest—no fever, no dizziness, no doubled vision… nausea, though. And the shaking wouldn’t stop.
He lifted his hand. The shivering stopped. He rested it on the top of the box again. The nausea re-doubled. He leaned on the dolly as a wave of sweat broke through his skin. Was it covered with some toxin? Surely not, but his medical equipment wasn’t distant. He could fetch it. Hirianthial turned and took a step, and the world spun. Looking back, the boxes doubled in his vision, and then rose into the air—no, that was himself, sliding to the ground.
He fumbled for something to help him stand, and his hand caught on the box seals. The nausea nearly overpowered him. What could possibly be the problem? Something inside the boxes? He had to look. He had to know. The seal clicked open beneath his fingers and he looked inside.
Corpses. The boxes were full of corpses—no, dying bodies. Their screams crowded out the world in his ears and smeared his vision with a kaleidoscope of ragged black and searing red.
OH NOEZ HE OPENED THE BOX
In response to an earlier question… yes, a lot of the Alliance tech is magic. It’s got rules, but I don’t pretend that this is hard science. -_-
