Opalina Outpost

Chapter 10 /Part 2/

In spite of her directive, enjoying himself at a party where he didn't know anybody and didn't rank highly enough to hold anyone's interest was impossible. He did find a few of the other coms who ran elite units out of the ziggurat, but as soon as he stumbled into a mention about Opalina, people found polite excuses to leave the conversation. Eventually, he gave up. New region, new rank, same old discomfort with networking. He followed the booming of fireworks to the back of the first floor, where the wall was transparent glass, and the show provided some distraction. This must mean they were nearing the launch, at least. He stood on the periphery of the gathering crowds, watching the purple and silver colors of Suzerain Aureli burst across the night sky.

A familiar voice drew his attention, and he looked, even though he knew he shouldn't. Lio stood close by, holding court in the middle of a knot of people. He wore a charming smile, but it strained as he listened to the man at his elbow.

"You must understand, Alior," the man said, "that the Mastali were not some extraordinary alien tribe. They were desert-dwelling wanderers with a knack for alloys and vivid imaginations."

"I'm merely suggesting that the Enlightenment units gave up too quickly on finding clues to the design of the Mastali lightships. There's more to be discovered in the Fennec region, I'm sure of it."

In spite of himself, Ravi edged closer. The man lecturing Lio let out an amused snort. "But that's what I'm trying to tell you. The Mastali never actually built a working lightship. They may have attempted it, certainly, they may even have created a few rudimentary pieces, but those are the remnants you find scattered all over the desert, not parts of some fully realized whole."

Lio muttered something about fully realized assholes, and a titter went through their audience. The older man glared down the edge of his beaky nose. "I'm afraid I didn't catch that."

"Oh, it was nothing!" Lio fluttered a hand at him. "Perhaps we can agree to disagree."

"Certainly. If you care to disagree with the foremost expert on the Mastali in favor of believing childhood stories, who am I to stop you? It is the province of the young to hold fanciful notions."

Lio swirled his drink a little too quickly, nearly splattering it over the rim. Ravi wondered how many drinks he'd already downed. "Tell me, if the Mastali were an ancient desert tribe that dreamed up things they never actually invented, how is it that there are remnants of their presence far outside the Fennec region?"

The professorial man chuckled. "Legends again, my young friend. The Mastali never ventured beyond this desert. And I'm sure it sounds more exciting to think of them boarding magical lightships, zipping all over the place, and flying into the stars, but—"

"There is evidence that the Vashyan dominion encountered the Mastali too. They have their own accounts of witnessing the Mastali arrive and depart their lands on lightships."

As if on cue, the people standing near Lio drew back. There was more than one shocked gasp, and the man Lio was arguing with looked as though he'd been slapped. Ravi almost broke into the circle and hauled Lio out of it. It had been years since the last skirmishes with the Vashyan dominion, but they were still the ancient and hated enemy, and flinging their name about as evidence of anything was a phenomenally bad idea.

His wayward recruit was saved by a sudden flickering of the lights, followed by Archcom Huseda's announcement that it was time to observe the launch. The glass wall turned opaque as an imager projected the live feed of the launch course in the capitol.

Ravi threaded through a few people, trying to keep his attention on the screen. But out of the corner of his eye, he watched the light playing across Lio's face. He remembered Lio's breathless optimism when he'd talked about searching for a lightship, hidden somewhere in the desert. He remembered the way Lio spoke about how everyone else seemed to view his dreams. Idle fancies. That old guy had gotten under his skin.

The same man was speaking loudly over the crowd, narrating for everyone. "Now we're getting a good view of the Great Mastali Course. This flight course is the supreme test of a craft's agility and speed. Of course"—he shot a pointed look at Lio—"it wasn't actually designed by the Mastali. But we do know it's the ultimate challenge, because no craft has ever successfully made it through the entire course."

Ravi had watched plenty of old footage of test attempts on the Great Mastali Course. No matter how many times he saw it, its sheer size never failed to impress. The stretch of land, with its lightship-sized obstacles, was enormous. But the lightship itself was a massive structure, with a needle-like nose attached to a barrel shaped body. Although it was covered in sleek metal, it was also pretty fucking ugly. Two sets of wings stuck out from the body, like an overgrown, clunky dragonfly.

He held his breath while the crowd joined the countdown, and the lightship was fired from its port in a colossal cloud of boiling smoke. It took off quickly enough and made it through the first set of glowing purple hoops. Some very optimistic onlookers cheered. Must be hammered already.

The lightship slowed as it tried to bank toward the next set of hoops, these ones neon green and smaller than the purple hoops that started the course. Enlightenment units had created crafts that could match sound-bending Mastali speeds, but flew only in a straight line. And they'd made others that could duck and dodge on rotor blades but lacked speed and staying power. The Great Mastali Course required a combination of everything, and that had proved elusive. A stopwatch in the corner of the screen ticked away mercilessly. Ravi winced as the dragonfly ship missed the third set of yellow hoops, barrel-rolling off course. No one would mistake that lumbering behemoth for a Mastali lightship.

As it lolled drunkenly through the air, the ship approached the second component of the course. The light vortex. A fast-shifting, spinning tunnel of light beams that tested the ship's adjustment speed and targeting. Needless to say, the drunk dragonfly didn't perform well. Several times, it bottomed out of the roller-coaster curves of the vortex, and whoever was operating the remote nav system gave up and flew straight toward the final challenge, the maze.

The maze was an oddity, and his favorite part. For one thing, it was an actual physical structure rather than a holograph like the hoops and the vortexes. It also wasn't a particularly tricky maze. It was made of towering metallic walls, but from the aerial drone footage, there were only a few offshoots and dead-ends. But Ravi had watched often enough to know that the real challenge lay in the dangerously narrow sections of the passage, and the unforgiving angles of the turns. No way the dragonfly made it through.

He closed one eye and squinted through the other, watching as the lightship picked up speed to enter the maze. Just as it drew level with the entry point, a huge shower of sparks curtained around it. Wings had clipped one of the walls on the right. The navigator jerked too far to the left in response, and a horrible screech echoed through the house sound system as the wings on the left side sheared into the opposite walls. The dragonfly, wingless on one side, plowed straight into the nearest wall and slid down it like a flaming egg yoke.

The audience groaned, and a few people turned away from the image. Someone let out a horrified shriek, but of course the professor piped up to calm them. "Don't fret, there's no one on board. Entirely remote nav system."

"That's likely part of the problem," Lio interjected. "The Mastali crewed their own ships."

"I'm sorry," the outraged older man said, "are you suggesting that you'd have preferred to watch a crew of actual human beings smash into that wall?"

"Certainly not," Lio snapped. "But they can do flight testing with a real crew before putting it on the course. The Mastali lightships were not operated remotely—"

The gentleman tossed his hands into the air. "First Goddess preserve me, Mastali lightships never existed!"

Ravi shouldered through a pair of whispering observers to get to Lio before he stuck his foot any further down his throat. He grabbed his recruit by the elbow and yanked Lio out of the circle.

"What are you—let go of me!"

"Time to go," he muttered. He smiled at the staring faces watching their exit and lofted his voice at them. "Really sorry, but we have a long trip back to our outpost." He nabbed Lio's drink and set it on a bot's tray as they passed. "Great party. Someone thank the Archcom." And then he hustled Lio out the door.