Reclamation

The journey wore on. The transport lurched and rattled through a landscape that could barely be seen, and Ivale's silence began to wear on Avir's nerves. Nal was using the seat's terminal, absorbed in his own work, but Ivale just sat with his eyes kept rigidly forward, watching the blobs of shadow that passed through the transport's lights so quickly that it was often difficult to tell if they were trees or mere stones.

Avir sat back and tried to feel sympathy for him. This was not what any of them had been chosen for. They were supposed to convert a series of buildings for use by the Vitae and begin researches on the artifacts. They were not a boarding party, even if the team surrounding them were.

Panair swung the transport to the left and they lurched up a steep incline. The lights showed up nothing but rocks, boulders, and mud.

"Approaching the Unifier shelter," Panair announced.

Avir looked out the window automatically, but there was nothing there except stone and shadow. The terminal on Panair's board showed a smooth-sided dome, glowing with incandescent light and heat in the infrared spectrum.

Avir felt her beating heart rise until it filled her throat.

The white dome drifted into view. The transport ground to a halt and the door lifted itself open. The security team leapt out and dived straight for the dome's entrance, leaving Avir, Ivale, and Nal trailing, a little stunned, in their wake.

"What…!" shouted a man's voice inside the dome.

Avir stepped under the canopy over the entranceway but couldn't see anything through the open door except piles of camp equipment and Panair's back.

"Stand still and be identified," barked Panair.

"All right, all right, I'm standing. Look, here I am."

Avir stepped sideways, squeezing between the wall and a stack of storage crates. Panair, dart gun out and ready, faced a bony, brown-bearded man with a hand lamp and a tool belt raised up over his head. Behind him, incongruously, a fire burned in an empty crate. Next to it, an artifact lay on a pallet of blankets, staring at the ceiling. Its mouth moved constantly, but it made no sound, nor was it paying any attention to what was going on around it.

Avir, forgetting dignity and propriety, hurried to the artifact's side. She knelt and unsealed her glove. She touched its skin. It was clammy and goose bumps prickled its dusky surface. Its eyes were glazed over and flickered back and forth, seeing something, but nothing that was in the room. Nal knelt beside her and also touched the artifact. He measured its pulse and fever with his expert hands and his mouth tightened.

"What did you do here?" Avir demanded of the bony man.

"It's hard to explain," he said. "Who in the backwaters are you lot?"

In answer, Ivale removed his helmet. The man saw Ivale's bald head and the neck of his scarlet rappings.

"Vitae," the Unifier croaked. "Jay…"

"You will be questioned about him before long," Avir stood. "But first you will explain what has happened to this artifact?"

The Unifier cast about as if he needed to try to identify what she was talking about. "Broken Trail?" he said finally. "I…" His gaze slid sideways to the security team. Two stood beside the door. Two more stood on either side of the dome and one had stationed herself beside the open hatchway in the floor. Avir wondered for a moment if the Unifier was going to make some escape gesture. She hoped not. If they had to dart him, it would be hours before they got any information at all.

But he didn't. He just sighed so heavily that his bony shoulders heaved. "It would be easier to show you." He tilted his head to indicate the trapdoor.

"Do so," ordered Avir, and she switched to the Proper tongue. "Bio-tech, tend the artifact. Stabilize her if you can."

"You hold my name," said Nal absently. He was busy fumbling in his tool belt for analysis patches.

Panair climbed down the rope ladder first, followed by one of his Beholden. After a long moment, he shouted, "Clear!"

"Go," Avir said to the Unifier.

With another resigned sigh, he fastened his tool belt around his waist and climbed down the ladder like it was something he'd been doing all his life.

Avir envied his poise as she herself descended. The ladder wriggled and wobbled under her weight. She was very glad to see the Unifier didn't dare to grin at her when she stood beside him. Avir was not surprised to see the string of lights that led down the corridor and glinted off curved walls of translucent silicate that held back drifting shadows.

This was Avir's first chance to see the shadowy containers up close. She leaned toward the wall, pressing her hands against the smooth, cool surface. She watched the blobs that moved with a fluid grace and random pattern. She swallowed hard. It was as if they stood in a vein the Ancestors had sunk into the world and were now surrounded by the blood the Vitae had sworn by for all their centuries.