Opalina Outpost

Chapter 13: Wrath's Mirror

"Anyone feel like taking a hike back to the slot canyons?" Teres sang, as they passed the Amphitheater. Lio grinned as the rest of the crew pelted her with dirt, and then glanced at Ravi. The com grimaced, like he always did when anyone made jokes about last week's event. But perhaps it wasn't the flooding that bothered him so much as the memory of the shelter.

He ought to graciously admit defeat and stop paying quite so much attention to Ravi. After what Ravi explained about his past, it was clear that he was not interested in casually breaking the rules for any repeats of their night together. Which was fine. On the rare occasion where Lio had allowed himself to develop some attachment to any of his nighttime companions, it always ended in a snarl of hurt feelings, or worse, the gradual realization that his family's status was a bigger draw than anything else he had to offer. He had no desire to experience any of that mess with Ravi. Yet it was devastatingly difficult trying not to notice the way Ravi's uniform hugged his waist, or the way his dark eyes swept over each person in the crew, assessing and vigilant. Or the way the muscles in his shoulders rippled beneath the tug of the ungainly cart behind him.

The cart in question thudded into Lio's elbow. In his quest to get a better view of some of his other favorite Ravi-features, he was about to be run over. He dashed forward again, cursing Yorune for making them haul this contraption.

They planned to hike further east than he'd ever gone, on their way to a famed lake somewhere on the opposite slope of the mountain. Ravi had explained that Yorune was taking point on this operation, since she'd found the commendation. No one besides Yorune seemed to fully understand what they were supposed to do, but apparently it involved lugging some giant, yellow, plastic cone-thing she'd spent the past week building, along with coils of flexible tubing and a smattering of other supplies. A damn heavy smattering.

"Need a break?" Teres asked, falling in beside him and nodding at the cart-rope he had looped around his waist. Lio had only just begun his second turn pulling the cart, but he already wanted to give up and roll back down the mountain. But he'd promised Ravi he would do his fair share. This was his team.

"I'm alright. Could do with a distraction, though," he said. A distraction from his other distraction, their distractingly glorious command officer.

"Perfect." Aziri materialized at Teres shoulder, prancing along like a stupid mountain goat, free from the shackles of the cart. "I've been meaning to talk to you. You remember the text Yorune picked up for me?"

Lio looked up from his plodding, eyes widening. "Did you translate it?"

"I made an attempt. It's some sort of Vashyan, and they've got fourteen thousand dialects, everybody and their mother seems to have invented their own way of saying—"

"What's the text about?" Teres asked, bulldozing the tangent. Wise, considering Aziri's tendency to ramble for hours about linguistics.

"Lio asked me to see if I could get us any evidence of Mastali activity in the Vashyan dominion. The trouble with that is finding real accounts rather than the propaganda the Vashyans made up. But I think we've got one."

"And what does it say?" Lio asked.

Teres broke in again. "It says," she began, and deepened her voice to a prophetic note. "Lioooo, you are destined for greatness, if only you'll stop looking like you want to suck Com Endessen's—"

"I will kick you down this mountain, Teres."

"Go ahead and try it."

She was twice as fast as he was, and he had a better chance of twisting his own ankle than giving her the slightest trouble. But he had other tricks up his sleeve. He narrowed his eyes at her. "Then I'll hide that locator wand somewhere in your room where you can't find it."