Being of the Field (7 page)

He nodded proudly. ‘But you know what is really encouraging?’

Taren shook her head.

‘I’ve finally found someone who’s as big a psycho as I am when it comes to jumping right in.’ He bowed to give Taren her due.

‘I figured I owed you one for tracing that pod for me,’ she retorted, waving off the intended praise.

Zeven looked disappointed. ‘Is this trip payback for the trace? Damn, I was hoping that deed was going to score me a date.’

Well, at least he was honest. A flirt, but right up-front about it. Taren knew he was trouble, but it was so long since she’d been pursued that she was rather flattered by the younger man’s attention.

‘Geez!’ She emphasised how ungrateful he was. ‘You’re getting to take me out, aren’t you?’

‘I’ll have Colbers pack a picnic brunch then, shall I?’ His cheeky grin grew.

‘Yo,’ Leal called, entering the suiting room to hurry them along. ‘Your target zone is entering daylight.’

Zeven motioned for Taren to lead the way. ‘Time to take one large step for mankind?’ He raised his brows, impressed with himself, and served Leal a smug smile on his way out.

The reconnaissance-carrier vessel they were using for this mission was larger than the tandem spacecraft they’d taken on their first flight together. Taren liked being able to sit alongside Zeven, and the front screen window of this transport awarded her a much better view of the planet they were approaching.

‘Will you look at that,’ Zeven mumbled, beholding a large tubular void disappearing into the cloud mass. The spectacular light show had been dimmed by the brightness of the twin suns above. ‘Science couldn’t hope to manufacture a better tunnel through an unstable
mass!’ He looked at Taren and covered the microphone on his headset to speak with her on the quiet. ‘I know that passage wasn’t there when I scanned the anomaly earlier today.’

Taren didn’t bother covering her mouthpiece. She didn’t mind who knew what she’d been up to or whether they believed her explanations. She was sick of keeping secrets. ‘I have a new friend, it seems.’

Zeven stared in disbelief. ‘Are you telling me that the gas did this at your request?’

‘I don’t believe it is just a gas,’ Taren told him bluntly. ‘I believe what we have here is an entity that the ancients referred to as an arupa-deva—a formless being whose body is entirely composed of electricity. These beings were said to be the builders of all things in the universe, the architects of matter, and I believe this particular arupa-deva was drawn to this planet to tend to it after the explosion when that meteor hit Oceane a couple of hundred years back.’

Zeven was so stunned by her response that he simply scoffed, but no words were forthcoming.

‘You’re not getting all mystical on us, are you, doctor?’
Leal queried through the intercom, as this was the first he’d heard of this theory.

‘Looks that way,’ she retorted dryly, ‘and I have a couple of prophecies for you as well.’

‘Shoot.’
Leal played along.

‘I expect that we are about to find life on this lifeless planet,’ Taren stated. ‘Below this cloud mass, we’ll find a different atmosphere to the rest of the planet, maybe even oxygen.’

Leal and Starman both got a good laugh out of that.

‘This deva of yours would have to have sped up the evolution process by millions of years, in just a couple of hundred.’
Lucian explained his crew’s amusement.

‘Yes, I do realise that.’ Taren tried not to sound insulted. ‘However, if I am proven correct and I can establish the existence of such an entity, then that would explain many of the knowledge gaps about the creation of our own planet and its species, wouldn’t you say? It would establish the missing link between physics, chemistry and biology.’

There followed a long silence, which Lucian broke.
‘You said you had a couple of prophecies?’

‘Ah, yes,’ Taren recalled. ‘In two weeks, Oceane time, the deva will be moving to its next project.’

‘It told you so?’
Lucian guessed.

‘It did,’ Taren agreed, imagining Lucian rolling his eyes. ‘At the same time, it told me that we had to return its missing parts by then or face dire consequences.’

‘Now you’re scaring me,’ Starman stated flatly, unsure of what to make of all her statements.

‘I scare myself,’ she admitted and then shrugged. There wasn’t anything she could do about it. ‘Believe me, it is not by choice that I got landed in the middle of this shit storm.’

‘You’re doing a great job of keeping it contained,’
said Lucian, with as much conviction as he could muster in his still-frantic state.

While they’d waited for daylight in their target area, Lucian had had the spaceship searched from end to end, and found no trace of his wife. All AMIE’s smaller craft had been checked and accounted for; only this misfired pod was outstanding.

He noted Kassa standing in the shadows at the rear of the flight deck and moved to have a quiet word.

‘Won’t you give me some idea of the gravity of Taren’s vision concerning Amie?’ Lucian begged. ‘Did she foresee an accident, a death?’

‘Don’t give up hope, Lucian,’ Kassa pleaded. ‘You were never one for unfounded speculation, don’t change now.’

‘I feel like a child being kept in the dark for his own protection, which leads me to think the worst!’

Kassa shook her head slowly, which indicated he’d not yet imagined the worst.

‘How am I to know that Taren isn’t at the bottom of all of this? Perhaps my brother had nothing to do with the stolen sample. Maybe this self-confessed spy is playing us all for sport?’ He was suddenly worried that he’d sent Zeven on a mission with her.

‘Lucian…’ Kassa grabbed his arm to encourage him to disregard such thoughts. ‘If Taren was behind this theft, then why would she be
so desperate to return the sample to its source? And why would she have alerted you to Amie’s absence if she had anything to do with it? If Taren was part of the problem, she would have been aboard that pod headed back to Maladaan, don’t you think?’

Lucian conceded the sense of this and calmed down.

‘We’re entering the tunnel now.’

Zeven’s report drew Lucian’s attention back to the flight deck.

‘This is just amazing.’
Zeven struggled to express the awe he was feeling.
‘There are great explosions of colour all through here.’

‘And lightning,’
Taren added.
‘It’s shooting through the anomaly like veins through an animal form. And yet, the electricity is contained beyond the tunnel. It’s not threatening our craft, but is lighting the way very nicely.’

‘The passage is arcing down at a low angle and the surface of the tunnel has been perfectly even around its circumference.’

‘What I think Starman is trying to say is that this passage is too perfect to be an accidental formation,’
Taren said and Zeven wasn’t heard to disagree.
‘There’s excessive turbulence beyond the tunnel, but inside the passage it is quite still…not a trace of wind, cloud or anything…just light.’

‘Conditions are beautiful, totally beautiful!’
Starman exclaimed, obviously enjoying himself.
‘Leal, you should be here, my friend…this is a pilot’s wet dream!’

‘Yeah, don’t rub it in…I’m already a bright shade of green,’ Leal retorted.

Zeven chuckled and went quiet for a bit.
‘The descent arc of the tunnel is increasing now.’

‘I read that.’ Leal cast an eye over the systems that were monitoring the flight path of the reconnaissance vessel. ‘You’re approaching the lower atmosphere
and…
’ Leal was surprised to note, ‘we’re picking up some trace elements of oxygen. Atmospheric pressure is much higher than that measured at the same distance from sea level on the rest of the planet. I’m reading methane, hydrogen and ammonia! It’s like you’ve just flown into a gigantic greenhouse!’

‘You might have hit the nail right on the head/’
Taren’s voice had a tinge of victory about it.
‘The readouts of the sample were much the same.’

‘The tunnel is expanding,’
Zeven related.
‘It looks like we’ve cleared the anomaly and are entering a steamy mist. Lightning is shooting down all
around us,’
and he sounded a little concerned about it.
‘The anomaly appears much brighter from this side and is casting a good light. The pod is close…I’m slowing down to skim the surface. There are some shadowy patches below that are moving?’

‘Starman, watch out!’
Taren yelled a warning.

‘What the—’
Zeven’s sentence was cut short by static, and every piece of equipment monitoring the craft went dead.

‘Starman!’ Leal endeavoured to restore contact, even though he suspected the craft was no longer transmitting and that probably meant the craft was destroyed or badly damaged.

‘Could it be interference?’ Lucian clung to their only hope.

‘I fear the disconnection was too quick and neat,’ Leal replied honestly. ‘An electromagnetic pulse could do it, but that would leave Starman’s craft dead in the air. Of course, he could reboot his systems, but we’d know if he got back online. None of AMIE’s sensors are picking up evidence of an EMG event and there’s nothing else I know of that would take out all the monitoring systems at once. Unless the tunnel through the anomaly collapsed?’

Lucian’s jaw clenched as he digested the news.

Kassa had never seen the good professor so close to losing his perspective.

‘Damn it!’ He turned away so his angry outburst wasn’t directed at Leal. ‘Damn it,’ Lucian repeated in a calmer, more accepting tone. He ran both hands hard through his hair, massaging his thoughts into a more reasonable order. ‘Run a trace—’

‘On it,’ Leal advised.

Only the lost pod was registering on the monitor at present. ‘NOT FOUND,’ advised AMIE’s computer.

Leal turned to Lucian, both of them looking gravely at each other.

Out of the corner of his eye Lucian noted Kassa making haste from the flight deck in the direction of the launch bay and the quarantine labs beyond.

‘Keep trying,’ he instructed Leal, striding off after Kassa.

As suspected, Lucian found Kassa inside Taren’s lab. ‘Lennox told you the entry code?’ Lucian was surprised, thinking of the theft and how guarded Taren had been about who had access.

‘I have my means,’ Kassa replied, figuring that Lucian would soon discover the extent of those means.

‘How do you plan to consult our friend here without the FFRD or the telepath?’ Lucian knew what Kassa was considering as the doctor had been supportive of Taren’s claims about the intelligence of the gas.

This was it for Kassa. No way to avoid exposing herself if she wished to save her crewmates. ‘Lucian, please just hush and let me concentrate a moment.’

Kassa turned towards the contained anomaly and bowed her head to focus; Lucian’s jaw tightened as he suddenly suspected so much, but he remained silent.

‘You promised safe passage for our vessel. What went wrong?’ Kassa raised her eyes to look at the anomaly. After a moment, she conveyed the information to Lucian. ‘The craft encountered one of the developing species on the surface…a tundrell.’

Lucian opened his mouth to ask what a tundrell was—

‘These long tentacles of vegetation extend above the steamy mist on the surface to photosynthesise in our light. We have just discovered that, deprived of our light, as the area underneath our tunnel was during this exercise, tundrells will wave about seeking a better vantage point. We are most apologetic for this oversight.’

Lucian couldn’t figure out what was more amazing: Kassa being a channel, or the anomaly’s explanation.

‘And what of our crew?’ he found himself demanding of the gas.

‘We are seeking them,’ Kassa conveyed, ‘and will report their condition to you as soon as it is known.’ Kassa then breathed a heavy sigh as the anomaly withdrew from her mind. Feeling faint after conversing with the entity, she staggered back to sit in Taren’s chair.

‘Are you all right?’ Lucian went down on one knee beside her.

Kassa nodded and then dared to look at her old friend. She was not surprised to find a bewildered expression on his face.

‘How long have you had this Power, Kassa?’

‘All along,’ she confessed, forcing a smile.

Lucian’s mind and eyes boggled. ‘But I’ve known you for over a hundred years and in all that time you never once even hinted—’

‘I’ve been a coward, Lucian,’ she admitted. ‘The importance of respect and acceptance was instilled in me from a young age. I doubt very much that I would be where I am if anyone had suspected my hidden talents. Such people are a risk to security…or at least they were in my younger days, before the MSS got many of us registered, under surveillance and under control.’

‘But they never pegged you.’ Lucian smiled for the first time in a while. In a way, he was proud of his old friend. ‘Well, your hidden talent could prove to be our hidden advantage.’ He tried not to think of all the adverse thoughts he might have had about Kassa over the years, which she had probably perceived in the midst of their disagreements.

‘You’ve always meant well, Lucian,’ she answered his thought. ‘That’s why I’m still here on AMIE. I couldn’t ask for a better employer or friend.’

His smile broadened. He couldn’t hide how extraordinary he thought she was. ‘I’m fine with that.’ He stood, subconsciously hoping that distance might shield his thoughts. ‘I’m not too sure how the rest of the crew will handle the fact.’ He was thinking of Leal in particular.

‘Must everyone know?’ Kassa seemed ashamed to ask.

Lucian frowned in thought. What was the moral thing to do here? ‘I feel that in this case, ignorance is bliss. I’ll leave it to your discretion who knows and who does not.’

‘Thank you, Lucian.’

He had to force a smile now, as all his worries returned to haunt him. ‘Stay with our friend and let me know when it reports back.’

‘Will do,’ she confirmed, sensing how heavily circumstances were weighing on his shoulders. ‘They’ll be fine,’ she reassured him. ‘I feel it in my bones.’

‘Coming from your bones, Kassa,’ Lucian decided, ‘I find that encouraging.’ He knew she was referring to Taren and Zeven…Kassa had offered no such assurance about his wife.