Part III: Meeting the resistance

Sound disappeared. Jyra felt the penetrating chill of snow soaking through her clothes. She lay still; if she didn’t move maybe the creeping cold would retreat, maybe the ice would forget she was there. Her ears registered a noise. It seemed like it should have been louder: a muted explosion that caused the ground to shudder beneath her. Or maybe she was just shivering.

Jyra rolled over and stared past the towering mountains at the clouds she had been above moments ago. She had never seen clouds like them. Tyrorken’s sky had always been choked with sand and soot-colored vapors created by the oil extraction industry. Jyra felt her body shaking and pushed herself out of the snowdrift. The feeling of the cold was utterly unfamiliar, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant. She thought of when she had a fever when she was fifteen and how the chills had swept through her limbs, freezing her joints and muscles. She had imagined then that her blood was freezing and thawing as her sickness persisted, warping her tissue and waking her, crying, from sleep. Then Dario had laid the cool washcloth across her forehead.

Jyra shivered and surveyed her immediate surroundings. She was on the ledge they had been aiming for. The snow stretched two hundred feet either side of her before the cliffs of the mountain interrupted it. From her position, it looked like the edge of the ledge was about six feet in front of her. The snow had been disturbed there, likely from the ship as it passed. A deep valley stretched below and the four peaks that formed it rose up before Jyra. Now that she was out of the open ship cabin, the air wasn’t as harsh—a crisp breeze lifted her hair in passing.

Jyra pulled her hands out of the drift. They were pink and the gentle wind made them sting. She stood up and couldn’t tell if it made her feel warmer. She could now see two dark shapes to the left of where she’d been sitting. It only took a couple steps toward them to see the straps. Both of the duffels had made it. But Craig had jumped after Jyra threw the bags. He should have landed between her and the luggage unless—

The snow on the edge of cliff had a hole, like a row of teeth with one missing, right where Craig should be. Jyra waded toward the spot, fighting the pulsing panic in her shaking limbs. She dropped to her hands and knees and crept the last three feet to keep from falling through the unsupported snow. She peered over the edge and saw Craig. He was standing on a craggy outcropping, too small to even sit on. His foothold was one of the few on an otherwise sheer face that offered a fall no one could survive. Based on the marks near her in the void in the snowy edge, Jyra guessed what had happened.

“Close one,” she said through chattering teeth. Craig looked up and smiled wearily.

“I needed to be about a foot closer to the mountain,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m lucky to be here at all. Check around. There’s a cave nearby. Derek’s friends likely heard the ship blow up. They’ll be out soon. I had a good view of the explosion.”

Jyra stood up and gazed in the ship’s direction of travel. Cinders and black debris covered a large snow bank on an adjacent mountain. Scanning down the cliff, she could see smoldering remains of the ship. She shuddered as another chill and feeling of panic motivated her to search for help. Jyra never thought that she would die from the cold. For the first time, she realized how far she was from home.

The snow deepened as she walked away from the edge. The warmth of her blood faded, her legs seized, and she fell forward into the snow. She lifted her head and saw figures emerging from an unseen opening in the face of the mountain.

Two pairs of hands, protected by thick furry gloves, grabbed Jyra’s shoulders and pulled her out of the snow. She staggered out of their grasp when she was upright and got a better look at the people she hoped were Derek’s friends. They were all similarly dressed in long fur coats and their trousers disappeared into tall boots that began just below their knees.

“I’m Jyra from Tyrorken,” she gasped. “My friend, Craig…he needs a rope…help getting up the cliff.”

Jyra nearly fell forward again and one of the people stepped forward to catch her.

“We’ll get him,” the person said. “But I’ve got to get you inside now.”

“The bags…”

“They’ll get them.” Her voice sounded feminine. “Come with me.”

Jyra walked through the snow, following the path the group had made from the cave. Her guide helped her up the rocky ledge. Once through the narrow mouth of the cave, the chill of the wind disappeared. A flickering glow on the wall and the smell of smoke indicated a fire nearby. Jyra glanced over her shoulder and saw Craig safely upon the ledge and moving toward the cave with assistance. She rounded a bend and saw a large fire, surrounded by benches, crackling in the middle of the cavern.

“Take a seat,” the woman said. “My name’s Macnelia. I’ll be back in a moment.” She removed her heavy coat and disappeared into another passage. Jyra sat on one of the benches and felt the heat of the flames rush through her clothes with the swiftness of the wind. She turned around and saw Craig, assisted by two figures, staggering into the cavern. Jyra made to stand up, but the larger man gripping Craig below the shoulder waved her back.

“Keep warm,” he said. Jyra thought his voice should have been much lower to match his size.

Two more people followed Craig’s escorts, one of them coiling a rope with gloved hands, the other dropped the bags inside the cavern. Jyra slid sideways on her bench to give Craig space. He sat and looked into the shadowy faces of those who saved him.

“Thank you—” both the men above him belatedly realized it was an opportunity for introductions.

“Berk,” the larger man grunted.

“Leonick,” the second man said.

They pulled off their furs and hung them on the wall. Berk shook his shaggy black hair from in front of his eyes. Leonick pulled a wool hat off his blond hair, which looked bronze in the firelight. The men walked by their guests back to a bench. As they passed, Jyra recognized new smells: smoky clothes and stale alcohol. Perhaps the odors had been locked inside the fur coats.

Craig rubbed his legs and moved them closer to the fire. Though Macnelia still hadn’t returned, the last two people joined the group. They were both women.

“Where’d Macnelia go?” one of them said. Though her coat was gone, she kept a scarf around her neck.

“Probably getting tea,” Berk said.

“Good guess,” Macnelia said, returning from the passage with a large tray of steaming mugs.

Berk and Leonick, who had their backs to Macnelia, twisted where they sat to look at her. Jyra noticed a tattoo on the inside of Berk’s left wrist. It was composed of vertical lines, equal in length. Macnelia set the tray next to Craig and took a seat on the only unoccupied bench on Jyra’s right.

“You meet everyone?” Macnelia said, directing the guests to help themselves to tea.

“Shandra,” the woman with the scarf said on cue.

“Neeka,” the last woman said.

“Now we have,” Craig said with a nervous smile over his mug.

“I think we can tell who’s Craig and who’s Jyra,” Macnelia said. “Are you two all right? Looks like you had a rough landing.”

“Not as rough as the ship,” Jyra said.

“You’d have been warmer in the ship before it fried you in the explosion,” Berk said.

“I’ll show you where you’ll stay and then you two should probably get to sleep,” Macnelia said. “Start getting used to the routine here.”

Jyra hadn’t thought about rest. Despite the smoke in the cavern, the air still seemed as fresh as it had in the ship and it gave her a sense of renewed strength. It was hard to believe only two Tyrorken nights had passed since the funeral. As her thoughts returned to Dario and then to Derek, she felt a hot surge crackle under her skin, a fierce desire to do something to oppose TF. It was too late to save her brother, but what was happening to Derek right now?

“How can we wait?” Jyra said, spilling tea over her hands; she didn’t realize her hand holding the mug shook. “We don’t have time.”

“You two need to recuperate,” Shandra said. “We can’t get you working on the efforts here and have your bodies give up halfway into the tasks.”

“They’re right,” Craig said. “I’m exhausted. It’ll hit you soon.” Jyra wanted to argue, but Neeka diverted the conversation.

“What happened to Derek?”

It took a moment for Jyra to realize that of course no one here would know why a member of the party was missing.

“He was shot in the leg before he could get on the ship,” Jyra said. She didn’t recognize her own voice, but felt her tears gathering.

“TF agents got him,” Craig added. “We don’t know anything after that.”

Neeka’s expression made Jyra wish she had been the one left behind, wounded and captured.

“I thought he was going to try and get more people,” Neeka said, her words distorted by her quivering throat.

Jyra wondered why no one had mentioned Derek’s absence earlier. It seemed like they should have asked about him. Maybe he had told them he was looking for more people. It would have kept them from worrying if he was gone for a long time. But he certainly had been planning on traveling with Craig and Jyra to Drometica.

When Jyra refocused on the room, she sensed a shift in the mood of those in the cavern. Every face showed concern or anger. Only the gentle pops and whistles of the fire spoke into the silence, which lasted until Jyra drained her cup of tea.

“New motivation to execute our plan,” Macnelia said with a tone of finality. “Let’s get you two to bed. We need your help and Shandra’s right. You’ll be useless without rest.”

They all stood together, leaving their mugs on the benches. Macnelia stepped forward and clasped Craig’s hands briefly, then repeated the gesture with Jyra. Then she raised her right hand and touched her fingertips to her forehead and her eyes fixed on Jyra’s Mourning Mark.

“Welcome,” she said. “May your efforts speed the downfall of Tyrorken Fuels.” Jyra saw the others tap their fingers to their foreheads in her peripheral vision.

“Sleep well,” Macnelia added. Jyra thought she might have been imagining the tears in Macnelia’s eyes.

The guests collected their bags and followed Shandra down the passage into the rest of the cave. A string of blue lights hung near the craggy ceiling. The floor was uneven but the rock was smooth.

“This is you,” Shandra indicated a narrow opening in the wall for Craig. “Don’t worry the room itself is pretty large.”

“Night,” Craig said.

Jyra followed Shandra around a bend in the passage and stopped outside her quarters.

“If you need anything, just keep going down the passage and you’ll find the rest of us,” Shandra said. Jyra felt a little claustrophobic as she looked at the ceiling of passage, which seemed to be getting closer to the floor farther along. How did Berk navigate this?

She thanked Shandra and stumbled into her room, dropping her duffel almost immediately. A washbasin stood in a corner and cot, complete with a thick blanket and soft pillow, had been set up near the opposite wall. Suddenly drowsy, Jyra dropped onto the cot and pulled off her boots, listening to the sound of Shandra retreating in the passage. She wrapped herself in the blanket and took several conscious deep breaths before falling asleep.

                              *

Jyra woke from her dreamless slumber. The light overhead glared through her eyelids. She sat up and stared around the room. Everything was much clearer than she remembered it. The ceiling was low and cracks spread in the granite as though it were a pane of cracked class. The floor was rough and cold. The washbasin was where she remembered it. A dresser of dark wood sat next to the towel rack. Though the room had no door, the entrance from the main passage joggled so Jyra was invisible to those walking by. The controls for the light must be somewhere else, because there was no switch. Jyra rolled over and reached for clothes, but realized her duffel was across the room.

She got up and brushed her hair from her face. The clothes in her bag were cold as if the duffel had soaked the chill from the snow and hadn’t had a chance to warm up again. She pulled on a clean pair of trousers and a button-up shirt. Once she had her boots tied, Jyra ventured into the main passage.

Like her room, she saw details out here that had escaped her the night before. The sides of the passage had been chiseled to widen it: white marks scuffed the stone. She had somehow missed the metallic buttresses placed every few yards. Even when she saw the main cavern, it was as though this was the first time she saw it.

The entire room sloped up toward the entrance passage. Jyra observed how the smoke from the smoldering fire gathered on the ceiling and moved toward the mouth of the cave. The benches were made of some sort of metal, the same that had been used to make the buttresses. The mugs had been cleared away. Two racks on the either side of the room held the fur coats. Jyra felt one of the sleeves. The fur was coarse and thick.

She walked back toward the passage and found Macnelia emerging from it.

“Sleep well?” Macnelia said.

“I did, thank you. It must have been the air here.”

“It’s much better than what you breathe on Tyrorken, I know.”

“You’ve been there?” Jyra asked.

“I used to work for TF,” Macnelia said. “I’m from Jiranthem. They came to my planet and I thought it sounded like a good job. They lied to me.”

“How did you escape?”

“Ran off during a mission to this planet. If I hadn’t known Derek and Neeka, I wouldn’t have survived.”

They began walking down the passage. Macnelia explained how she and Derek had plotted their escape. They had kept their conversations brief and didn’t discuss details at first. Each had been wary of the other exposing the plan.

“TF agents would tell stories of employees who were caught trying to desert the company,” Macnelia said. “I never knew if they were true, but it made one thing clear: I’d only share my plan with one person and only after I had their trust. Up you get, Craig!” she added as they passed his room.

“I don’t remember whether Derek or I noticed the other’s intentions first, but luckily neither of us was going to alert authorities.”

At that moment, the passage opened up onto a cavern three times the size of the one with the fire pit. It reminded Jyra of the book Dario had given her again. Consoles and control panels filled the middle of the room. Neeka sat at one, typing energetically on a keyboard, her eyes fixed on the screen in front of her. She shot a cold look in Macnelia’s direction. The lights of the buttons and panels seemed to light the cavern and the granite ceiling flickered as it reflected the glow back at the floor.

“Morning,” Berk said, raising a mug in greeting. He was standing next to a table in a dim corner where Shandra and Leonick were eating. Both of them waved and Jyra realized they had their mouths full.

“Breakfast?” Berk asked.

“That sounds great,” Jyra said. She hadn’t eaten for hours and now that food was on her mind, all she wanted to do was eat.

“I’ve got some work to do,” Macnelia said. “Go ahead.”

Jyra walked to the corner and Shandra handed her a platter of toast and eggs.

“Dig in,” she said.

“Care for a sip?” Berk said, offering his mug.

Jyra accepted, not catching Shandra’s half-hearted interjection, and nearly choked on the stinging drink that had a familiar flavor.

“It’s tea mixed with Nova whiskey,” Berk said. “Sorry.”

“More like Nova whiskey with a drop of tea,” Shandra said.

“It’s fine,” Jyra said. “I could do with a drink, but I need some food first.”

She devoured the toast and was shaking salt on her eggs when Craig appeared.

“Morning,” Berk repeated. Craig stared at the instruments in the cavern, obviously impressed.

“Was there something in the tea last night?” he asked with a yawn as he approached the table. “I don’t remember the last time I slept so well.”

“Yeah,” Berk admitted. “Why do you think the mugs were already poured when Macnelia brought them out?”

“You drugged us?” Jyra said.

Berk replied with another swig from his mug. Having already seen his tattoo, the rest of his arms caught her attention. The veins bulged beneath the skin, as though yearning to burst through.

“Needed you fresh for today,” Berk said. “Didn’t need you asking questions and lying awake wondering what was in store half the night.”

Jyra didn’t know what to think. She kept eating her eggs, noticing Shandra consuming the remainder of them from the skillet on the stove. Right before she entered this cavern, Macnelia had spoke of the importance of trust and she had deliberately drugged Jyra and Craig.

“They did it to me when Leonick and I got here, too,” Berk said. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”

“All I can do is hope it won’t,” Craig said as he filled a plate from the platter. “We’ve got nowhere else to go.”

“That won’t be true for long,” Shandra said. “We’ve got some theft missions for supplies that have to be carried out in the next day or two.”

Jyra couldn’t move past Macnelia’s deception with the tea. She looked over at Neeka and thought of the expression she had aimed at Macnelia earlier.

“Why’s Neeka angry?”

“Derek, of course,” Berk said, draining his mug. He produced a flask a pocket near the knee is his trousers and emptied it into his mug.

“Why not just drink from the flask?” Craig said, scooping up eggs with his fork.

“Why don’t you eat your eggs with your knife?” Berk shot back and then continued speaking with such directness, Jyra couldn’t tell if he was serious. “I’ll tell you why. It’s slower.” With that, he threw back the mug and swallowed the contents in one gulp.

“Macnelia’s got her way of doing things,” he said. “So far, she’s held us all together. This lapse with Derek is the first time something serious has gone wrong.”

“Is drugging newcomers part of her way?” Jyra said. She didn’t mean for her tone to be so bitter. She was well aware that without Macnelia, she would likely have frozen to death on the ledge.

“We’ve already established that it is,” Berk said. “Point is, she won’t always tell the whole truth, but she’s got good reasons for it generally. Take Neeka for example. Macnelia knew something happened to Derek ‘cause he sent a distress signal. At the time, Neeka was crunching numbers, running calculations for a ship to head for Tyrorken from here. Rather than distract her with the bad news about her man, Macnelia told Neeka that something had come up and Derek would be delayed. In the conversation, all Macnelia suggested was maybe Derek was recruiting more people.”

“But he wasn’t. He’d been shot,” Jyra said. “Macnelia was lying outright.”

“Do you know that Derek is not recruiting others?” Leonick said. He was staring at the ceiling and didn’t seem to be waiting for an answer.

“We didn’t know he’d been shot,” Berk said. “In fact, we didn’t even know if your ship was en route. Had it not exploded, we might not have come out looking. A distress signal from Derek could have meant anything, including that the ship hadn’t or couldn’t launch.”

“You didn’t see us come in on radar?” Craig asked, pushing his empty plate away.

“Neeka’s working on getting our radar system up and running again,” Shandra said. “She’s also seething and worrying. She’s a brilliant programmer, but a little too emotional for her own good, especially while working under someone like Macnelia.”

Jyra looked across the room again and watched Neeka, whose fingers twitched over the keys as she stared the monitor while her lower lip trembled. Jyra knew who Neeka was thinking about and doubted the sonar would be fixed soon. Macnelia had said without Derek and Neeka, she wouldn’t have survived. Jyra wasn’t sure what such commitment meant to Macnelia if she treated Neeka in such a misleading manner. Perhaps Macnelia was so accomplished at holding back parts of the truth, she wasn’t even aware of when she did it, Jyra thought. She recalled how easily her hostess had suggested the fresh air had allowed Jyra to sleep so well.

“Did you say Neeka had been making calculations to send a ship back to Tyrorken?” Jyra asked Berk.

“Yep.”

“So you have a ship?”

“Nope.”

Shandra pulled up an empty chair and sat between Jyra and Craig at the table.

“Since you two are new here, it’s best to get used to the kitchen area. Why don’t you start by the doing the dishes? After that, we can sit down and figure out how we’re going to steal a ship.”