The Phoenix of Hamura was capable of entering most planetary atmospheres, and although it would make a more secure and pleasant base of operations they decided not to land a two hundred metre long armoured luxury yacht where any rival investigators would see it, and took instead its atmospheric shuttle, the Kashmir. The shuttle was an elegant, winged dagger about thirty metres long, which they loaded with camping gear and three grav bikes and took down to the surface in a wild, bumpy ride through two huge storm cells. Saqr flew with consummate skill, whooping and cheering every time the ship bucked and bounced in the maelstrom, but everybody was glad when the ship finally broke out of the heavy grey mass of stormclouds, trailing condensation in tight vortices around its six wings and swooping in an unnecessarily sharp loop towards the landing site they had chosen.
“Saqr!” Al Hamra yelled as the ship banked steeply around a line of hills and roared at gut-wrenching speed towards the zone of forest they had marked out. Saqr’s appetite for danger was matched only by her skill, and every time they flew in atmosphere with her the Firebirds were uncertain which would triumph.
“What?” She yelled back, as the ship slammed to a halt above the landing site and lowered gently to the ground, engines powering down with a gentle whine. “That was fun!”
Muttering and grumbling, they pulled themselves out of their seats and set about the exit protocols. While Adam and Al Hamra donned armour and slung weapons Olivia checked the atmospheric monitoring system, Siladan ran through the ship’s rudimentary sensor systems, and Delecta and Saqr headed down to the hold to lower the rear cargo doors. After Siladan and Olivia had confirmed the safety of the forest outside the starboard hatch opened and they emerged into the steaming heat of the Kuan jungle.
Saqr had set the shuttle down on a wide stretch of sandy beach on the eastern edge of a clear lake. A river flowed into the lake from the north, and on the southern side the lake tumbled over a narrow waterfall into a lower valley, where their maps told them the loggers’ camp was built. Further east, behind their landing site, a narrow line of trees screened a wide expanse of swampland that stretched away to a distant escarpment, barely visible in the haze of afternoon mist to their east and north. The area around the lake was quiet but for the occasional raucous call of strange birds and the distant rumble of the waterfall, and the sand and rocks of the beach were slick with recent rainfall. Long shreds of cloud drifted past above them, trailing a mass of storm cloud that blew away to the north east, and when they looked back in the direction of the winds that carried those clouds they could see another bank of storm cloud forming to their southwest.
“Storm season,” Olivia announced as they stood taking in the vast, unbroken forests stretching as far as they could see to the west and south. “Looks like we have an hour maybe before the next squall. Let’s get busy!” She began yelling instructions as she walked around the ship to the rear cargo door, ducking as Saqr reversed rapidly out of the entry on a long, thin grav bike. She spun it around with a whoop and hurtled off towards the river, zooming so low over the surface of the water that she tore up a line of steam and spray in her wake. As Saqr and her cloud of steam receded along the river toward the distant escarpment the rest of the Firebirds hurried to set up camp, dragging tents and scouting equipment away from the ship towards the more solid ground on the edge of the beach, where the sand and rock gave way to short grasses and shrubs growing out of a bed of hard reddish-brown earth. The tents unfolded and inflated automatically, three large double-chambered cabins of tarpaulin and plastic reticulating themselves into shape while Olivia and Dr. Delecta laid down perimeter fences and Adam and Siladan lugged over the cooking equipment and set it up, a small mobile kitchen tent forming on the lakeward side of the sleeping tents. Lavim Tamm ventured out from the shuttle to lay down cables from its external power gates, and soon insect exclusion fields and perimeter warning systems were buzzing to life, their small campsite suffused with the glow of neon and the faint hum of electrical equipment doing its patient work. By the time Saqr returned, tearing up the beach and throwing sand everywhere with her reckless, skidding stop, Al Hamra already had coffee brewing and hot water boiling, and Dr. Delecta and Adam had set out camp chairs around a large plastic table.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Think I found the dig site,” Saqr announced as she stomped through the exclusion field into the camp, pulling off her helmet and shaking out her short, dark hair. “And I think I saw the Sogoi, too.” She flopped into a camp chair, accepted a cup of coffee from Al Hamra and tossed the helmet onto the red earth beside her. “There isn’t much out there. Just trees.”
Casting a dubious look behind him at the gathering bank of heavy grey cloud, Al Hamra sat across from the pilot, coffee in hand, and gestured for the others to join them. He watched Saqr’s hand as she pointed to the west, across the open beach and over the lake to a large grey rock standing alone in the trees beyond the far bank. “I think it’s in the far side of that rock. Saw some burnt-out scrub and maybe a camp. I didn’t look too closely. Maybe the dig is inside the rock.”
“That’s right,” Lavim confirmed, following her pointing finger. “It’s over there. We burnt some forest away and set our camp on the outside of the rock.”
“You’ll stay here Lavim,” Al Hamra reminded him, as everyone else took seats around the table. “We’ll have communicators and we’ll leave you weapons. You’ll be safe here, no matter what happens.”
“And we’ll be back,” Adam told him firmly. “Nothing in there can stop us.”
“I saw something else,” Saqr told them, once they were all sitting down. “Further up the river. Some kind of old stone towers. And I found Dr. Wana’s dig too, it’s by the river northeast of Lavim’s dig.” She stood and turned to face north, pointing to the mouth of the river where it entered the lake. “But it looks abandoned now.”
“A bit suspicious,” Olivia said. “Lavim’s dig dead, the statuette gone, and Dr. Wana’s dig conveniently over as well.”
“It looked like a real dig though,” Saqr said, before she gave a slight nod in Lavim’s direction, “Though I don’t think I would know, really. But it looked all … dug up. So.” She sat down again, ran her hand through her hair and shook out sweat.
It was very hot on the beach, with only a faint breeze stirring the surface of the lake near its center, where the waterfall drew a thin reed of air towards its distant tumult. Surrounded by hills and the dense, brooding forest the still expanse of water was like a sauna in the afternoon heat, dense and suffocating in a way that Saqr especially, used to stationary life, struggled to accept. Within a few minutes of retiring to her chair she had stripped her deck coveralls down to the waist, the tattooed circuit-board patterns on her stomach and arms beaded with sweat. Dr. Delecta disappeared into the campsite and returned wearing just a loose robe, and Adam stripped down to his dhoti, but nothing could stave off the intense heat of the afternoon. Tired and despondent, they waited in their chairs for the air conditioning in their tents to begin to work, watching the gathering storm clouds roll and seethe over the deeper forest beyond the waterfall.
“This place is awful,” Saqr said finally, as the first big drops of rain began to hit the far side of the lake, which rippled and striated with the impact. “Let’s find out what killed everyone and get out before the heat kills us.”
“Or something worse,” Olivia added as they gathered up their things and retreated to their tents to weather the sudden storm. She stopped at the entrance to the tent she was sharing with Saqr, stared across at the distant swamp. “Or something worse.”
