Madlands

28. Frustration & Awe

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Everything hurt, and she was alone, and it was right.

She'd answered every question they'd hissed in her ear, numbly and truthfully. She didn't care. They just hadn't asked her about what she'd expected them to. They'd booked her and addressed her only as Jules Ojani, which had been the first sign that this wasn't going to go how she'd thought it would.

No mention of Cereda, the Rangers, the base, or her pointless actions against their plans to destroy the moon.

They'd wanted, instead, to know all about her months-old "illicit investigations" into the Empire's private trade routes through the sector—how she'd found them, why she was looking, who she'd shared the information with, and who'd hired her to do the digging in the first place. The perpetually angry lieutenant who had interrogated her—twice now—didn't seem to like her answers very much. But, there must have been enough of a ring of truth to them to satisfy the report they needed to complete, as it had been almost two days, Grey guessed, since they'd run through the whole sorry exercise a second time. Or perhaps her emotionless, slowly delivered, and highly technical responses had bored them enough to not want to hear any more from her while they figured out what to do with her.

Their idea for that had been work duty, but that hadn't gone well for anyone. Even if she didn't care what happened to her, even if she deserved to end up here, there was no way that she would contribute an ounce of effort towards the Empire's goals. So she'd put up quite the fight, despite her only-recently patched-up wounds, and they'd given it right back.

There were no official charges, as this wasn't an official situation.

She'd literally stumbled into a patrol of Troopers doing a general ground sweep on Rin in the turmoil after Cereda. Despite the blood and dirt, she'd looked enough like the second image—this one showing her face in profile—that had recently been added to her original bulletin for them to bring her in. They'd whisked her up to this... apparent prison station, and that was it.

The trip hadn't been very long; they had to still be in the Icaria system. She would have felt the Halo. Orbiting either Lorimar or Jove was a possibility, as both were bright white ice-worlds, and the light coming in the transport's small viewport, just before they reached the bay, had been crisp and intense—the pilot shielding his eyes with his hand. Grey had barely looked up as the slant of light that swept through the hold threw itself diagonally across her body. She didn't need to know where she was going or what would happen next.

So now she sat, bruised and beaten from yesterday's difference of opinion about work duty, alone on the floor of a small cell that smelled, as did the rest of the place, a lot like fuel.

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If the Eridani Plateau was intact, then perhaps so would be the Deep Fountain, and if his Tribe had stayed there after Torin had pointed them to it—had judged it to be a good location for the covert—they may still be there. It was a lot of ifs and maybes.

He set the Crest down in a flat-floored, cliff-side cave along the edge of the Plateau. It didn't connect to any passageways or join with any other caverns, but it seemed like a good nook for the ship. Bringing up Grey's subterranean maps, he scanned for what might be recognizable as the Fountain. He knew it would be at the lowest levels, at groundwater. But even her maps of this area seemed incomplete and lacked detail. He compared them to the Empire's maps on the data-key, but they were less comprehensive still.

She'd mentioned that Ceredans were isolationists; they probably discouraged or even actively defended against the creation of extensive plans of their community caverns.

Grey's rough plans of the area did suggest that the cave system extended as far down as groundwater a few kilometres in from where he'd landed at the edge of the Plateau. If he could manage to keep heading mostly west and slightly north once he got into the maze of the underground, and then downward... it would still be a long shot.

At the very least, he could see that there was another cave, not all that far along the cliff, that would provide an entry-point into some linked caverns. He would take the phoenix and start there.

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Mando's expedition was turning out to be a strange combination of frustration and awe.

The wipe-mining might have failed in its full-scale effects, but had clearly sent shockwaves across the entire moon. There were full and partial collapses of many passageways and cavern rooms that he could tell were recent. It meant more dead ends than he would have met a few days ago. But there was also the experience of continuous discovery, as he came upon each new cavern biome of quiet and extraordinary life. He hadn't seen any people, or even evidence of habitation; it was all soft and glowing untouched wilderness, deep beneath the surface. He'd stopped for a ration break in a cavern filled with thick glassy vines that stretched from the ground to the ceiling like living stalagnates. The most unexpected feature was that he rarely encountered true darkness. There was almost always some plant or fungi or lichen or even what looked like a rock of some kind, that was giving off its own low light.

Cereda's curious beauty was probably the only reason he'd kept justifying a few more minutes, or one more cave, before he would retreat and figure out a way to get more guidance.

If Torin had known where the Deep Fountain was, perhaps someone else in Naida would too, perhaps Jesa. He should have asked her before he'd rushed off to the silo base, but his whole focus had shifted to following Grey as soon as he'd heard the broad strokes of Kayliff's plan. He could go back to the village now; perhaps she would still be in town.

It was only in heading back in the direction he'd come from that he saw it—marked on the wall of a passageway where the stone jutted out at chest-height and visible only with his visor attuned to the right wavelength—a simple icon of the Mythosaur, accompanied by a directional indicator. It pointed down a different fork in the passages than he'd chosen earlier. Now that he'd found the route, it wouldn't be the last way-finder that he would see.

Another half-hour of increasingly downward tunnels and nooks and caves later, he could hear it before he could see it—the rush of water meeting water. The sound was different from a typical waterfall—this water did not crash over rocks or get splintered by obstacles on its way down—it fell cleanly and landed smoothly into its new home. As his tunnel gave way to a large and oval shaped basin, he was struck by the abject inadequacy of the description that he'd read on the data-key.

The Deep Fountain, and this had to be it, looked as if some almighty being was pouring down a clear stream of water from a cosmic spout into a broad pool of the strangest, luminous blue. The ceiling of the cavern swept many stories tall at its centre, where the opening for the stream was set, just off centre. There was an almost continuous rock lip along the edges of the basin, allowing passage around the space. A handful of narrow openings to other tunnels and spaces dotted the outer walls; making it feel like the hub of a great wheel.

As Mando watched the falling water, its uncommon smoothness sometimes tricked his eyes, appearing to flow upwards for a few moments before the illusion righted itself. He understood the name. He was no Armourer, but he could imagine himself, upon walking into this place, knowing that it would be a good and prosperous home for the Tribe.

Pulling his eyes away from the strange spell of the stream, he saw Paz, standing opposite him, across the basin.

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