#baurik

“He’s nearby,” said Nectra, hopping back from Zack and twirling her staff.  She set it into the soil and leaned into it, almost clutching it, with the shimmering blade of Virellium energy curving over her head.  Zack carefully stood and inspected his pistols for damage.

“Near enough that he heard us planning, or near enough that we’ll find him in five, maybe ten, minutes?”

“The second,” she said.  “Maybe longer if he sees you coming.  He’s got sharp eyes.”

“I’ve got deep shadows,” said Zack.  “We’ll see which one wins.  Baurik?  Or… Barik?  Bar…  Chala’s friend?”

“What?”

“I’m calling someone, I think his name is Baurik.  He’s a Sthenite.”

A gentle shake of leaves sounded and the yellow and green-scaled Sthenite stood between them, ruffling his feathers and tasting the air with his tongue.

“Oh, look at him!” said Nectra.  “Oh, he’s adorable!  Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, you only get teeth like that on the cutest puppies and venom like that on the nicest echidnas.  Hey, Baurik.  Shtothro Nostrauhara?”

“Vashtara thaul Tzak vash.”

“You can tell what they’re saying?”

“No, but I’m good with sounds.  I think I’m asking if we can leave and chase the Phantom Matador without all of Baurik’s friends in the bushes making us pin-cushions.  I think he said that it’s fine.  Where to?”

“Just across a stream west from here,” she said.  “Will your friends come along to help us?”

“I doubt it,” said Zack.  “This is part of my trial now.”

“Okay, then.  Follow me.”

***

The Phantom Matador paced beneath the jungle canopy, his black mask and hat still covering his face despite the incredible heat.  The shangmere had taken too long, and he wondered if he would have to rescue her again.

The snapping of a nearby twig brought a stop to his pacing.  He stared in the direction of the disrupted foliage, wondering what kind of animal would care to stay so still after making a careless noise.

“It’s you, then,” he said.  “Very well.  Step out of your hiding place so that we might settle this face to face.”

An arrow sailed from the underbrush, but missed the Phantom Matador by over a foot.  The black-garbed man tossed his head back and laughed with a musical tenor voice.

“The Phantom Matador won’t fall so easily!  From the moment you laid eyes upon me, you were already deceived.  It may be a breach of etiquette when I ask you to stop hiding when I continue to do so, but the conversation will be much less tiresome for both of us if you comply!”

A rustle of leaves to the left of the Matador announced the arrival of a human woman with black hair and a bow made from a machine.  She neared the Matador, who raised an eyebrow.

“I confess, I expected you to be hiding elsewhere… was the twig snapping a diversion?”

“I moved after I shot the arrow,” she said.  “I almost didn’t believe Zack when he said how you dressed.  That cape has to be sweltering.”

“Fashion is always worth a little suffering,” he said.  “It is a pleasure to meet you.  I expected the only other human on the planet, and was not disappointed.  It is curious that you know Zack Gamma, but not entirely surprising, given the circumstances.”

“Why did you kill the Sthenites near my hut?”

“They were trying to stop me,” he said.  “They seemed very taken with the idea of preventing me from leaving.”

“Give it back.”

“Give what back?”

“What you stole.”

“Can one truly steal in a world with no laws?”

“There are more laws here than you know,” she said, nocking another arrow.

“Yes, yes, the tribal concerns and rules of the wild and all that,” he said.  “You and I know better, though.  Miss…?”

“Chala.”

“Miss Chala, I come from a more civilized and enlightened world view-”

“Most visitors to this planet feel that way.  They all believe the Sthenites are worth exploiting.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said.  “I wasn’t saying that humanity is more refined than the Sthenites, though from a biased point of view one might make that case.  No, I was saying that within humanity I am more refined than your average individual.”

“Which led you to murder innocents in a village.”

“It was self defense,” he said.  “And I certainly wouldn’t have been there if someone hadn’t been stockpiling a highly dangerous substance.”

“It isn’t dangerous if handled properly.  And they would have only attacked you if you were handling it improperly.  It’s not a secret to them.  I’m not exploiting them.  They know I have it, and that I can treat it with care.”

“So you DO believe that I stole Virellium from you.”

“Yes, of course,” she said.  “Assuming you’re not just an insane murderer, you must have taken something, and Virellium is what there was to steal.”

“Are you sure you have… the Facts straight?”

Chala lowered her arrow.

“What?”

“Don’t play coy now.  You heard me, and there was legitimate need to clarify when I did it.  Do you have your Facts straight?”

“Facts?”

“Exactly.”

“So you did steal something,” she said.  “But not the Virellium.  …Why would you steal that?”

“I knew what it was the moment I saw it,” he said.  “It may not be in my field, as it were, but the value is unmistakable.  And say what you will about not exploiting these people… you KNEW the value of it.  Why else would you even have it?”

“Give it back to me,” she said.  “Give it back, and I won’t kill you right here.”

“Miss Chala, you are more than welcome to try,” he said.

Zack tumbled through the air, experiencing the vertigo-inducing transition between jumping away from something and falling to something else without changing direction.  The leap from Xorn’Tal’s asteroid had been uneventful, a rare problem-free attempt at executing a plan without difficulty.

Zack’s robotic parachute was happy.  It had worried, to the extent that its code allowed worry, that the interruption of Zack’s initial jump would have prevented it from achieving its planned operation.  The only change now was that its operator had, apparently, somehow moved to another, leafier asteroid without requiring its services.  An analysis of the space around its operator revealed an abnormal asteroid density in the immediate vicinity, but nothing in the way of the current descent.

Zack double checked his heat shield to make sure that it was active, unsure of what he would do in the event that it wasn’t.  There had been rare accounts of drops from this height without a reentry shield, but no humans had done it to his knowledge.  Fortunately the shield was holding up nicely.

The jets within the parachute kicked in and began steering him toward the still distant ground.  Flashes of orange and red flame began to appear in his vision, flaring into existence mere inches from his face and, when he looked reflexively, all around him.  The flames of reentry licked hungrily against the invisible shield provided by his reentry device, and he wasn’t sure if the temperature actually began to increase or if he was just imagining it becoming warmer as the wreath of flame about him became more constant and steady.

Zack wasn’t sure how long the fall would take, but dimly remembered that a fall from the generally agreed upon boundaries of “space” for most human-friendly worlds would take three to five minutes for an unpowered craft that was dropping like a stone, but since he had a smaller surface area than an escape pod and since the robotic parachute would be steering him and slowing his descent he expected to take over a quarter of an hour once he was more firmly within Mandrake’s atmosphere.

He could already see the brilliant greens and vibrant oranges and reds of the jungles that infested the planet.  Far denser than the recreation of the underjungles of Ravelar that Murk had shown him, Mandrake’s vegetation was what had drawn humans to the Veskid system in the first place after long-range space probes had revealed its presence.  After getting closer and seeing the heart-pounding reality of a jungle more dangerous than anything they had prepared for, the settlers instead opted to take a closer look at the comparatively barren, but still usable, world of Veskid, effectively agreeing to the Desperation that their first city was named for when they crashed upon approach.  It was old hat among the citizens of Veskid to remark how the settlers who founded the city had chosen desperation over danger.

Historical goals are long lasting ones, however, and in the ensuing decades Mandrake had been examined more carefully.  It would never be a friendly place, but over time numerous expeditions, adventure seekers, scientific researchers and insane treasure hunters had gone there, mostly to be heard from again.

The parachute beeped and propelled Zack to what he was prepared to call the west, though he had been disoriented by the drop.  He wasn’t sure where Carmen had set up for his landing sight and ultimate rendezvous point, but he started watching eagerly, hoping to see some clearing ahead even though he knew he was still miles away from achieving planetfall.

***

“More fire from the sky, Chala.”

Chala turned from her work at the primitive forge and saw Baurik nearing.  The bright feathers and serpentine scales that covered him still seemed surprising, though fortunately no longer threatening, not since the inter-tribal peace began.

“What sort of fire?”

“Small,” Baurik said.  “We almost missed it.  I am bound to report this to the Suzerain, as you know.”

“I know,” said Chala, turning back to the forge and shaking a joint into place.  “I’m surprised you haven’t already.”

“Every fire brings change,” said Baurik.  “As an agent of change, you have the most to lose.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Chala.  “I’ve got everything under control.”

“The Suzerain has everything under control,” said Baurik.  “And she agrees with you when you petition for peace… individually. As do I.  But the Suzerain cannot… will not… continually leash the tribes from pursuing starprey.  She would rather put out brushfires than the sun.”

“I can’t blame her,” said Chala.  “I’ll talk to whoever it is.  I can convince them to leave.  It’s probably just another treasure hunter.”

“And if you can’t?”

“I sided with the Suzerain, and she’s got my back when I play nice,” said Chala.  She grabbed her bow… the alien device of metal and plastic that Baurik still found hard to imagine.  Chala had explained the process of molding “plastic” and other materials, building component parts up instead of whittling component parts down, but it still felt wrong seeing such a common device in an uncommon way.

“You will… encourage him more strenuously?”

Chala looked at Baurik.  There was a trill in the back of his throat that suggested something like coyness, or teasing.  She smiled and shook her head.