Opalina Outpost

Chapter 21: Leaving

Lio sat on the edge of his stripped mattress, staring at empty shelves. All his crystals and tools and plants and treasures were packed away in boxes and trunks near the outpost's main entrance, ready for transport down to the hov that would take him away from Opalina. He couldn't quite grasp it.

When Ravi had first told them exactly how far their discovery extended, Lio had joined in the crew's uproarious response. There was a lot of shouting about how they'd been cooking and sleeping and brushing their teeth in a lightship the entire time. And then they got the rest of the news, and his euphoria was slaughtered. It was worse than unfair. His lightship had found him long before he knew it, and when he finally recognized it, he was only allowed to have his joy for a single day. A cruel joke.

His holowatch flashed with another missive from Alina. He ought to be preening as the news spread through the network of ziggurats, and his family's stunned congratulations came in. Finally, the odd-duck baby of the family had managed something of consequence. Only for it to be immediately clawed out of his hands by people who spent his whole life scoffing at his beliefs.

He couldn't stay in his bedroom any longer, late as he already was for the crew's deadline to report to the main entrance. Any minute, Ravi would have to send someone to come get him. Perhaps the com himself would arrive, expecting to drag him out by his ankles. One last, longing glance at his little room. The place felt more like home than all the grand estates where he'd grown up.

Tears stinging in his throat, he plodded out the door and through the tunnel, trailing his hand along the rock as he went. If the inspector was to be believed, there was Mastali alloy under every rugged inch of rock. He imagined he could feel it calling to him through the stone, singeing his fingertips with resentment as he abandoned it.

Ahead, light spilled into the tunnel from the main entrance, propped open wide. Teres, her face swollen from crying, glanced up at him as she picked up another box. She turned away for the mag lane without a word. Trying to make anyone feel better about this was a useless effort. Lio grabbed the nearest crate he could carry and staggered after her.

Archcom Huseda had sent enormous hauling hovs for them, and gradually the vehicles filled with all the evidence of a collective life interrupted. The crew worked in silence, with the occasional mumbled directions from Ravi and Jossen as they arranged all the supplies and belongings. Ravi's expression was inscrutable, his gaze passing over Lio without ever pausing. He didn't have energy to wonder at the com's avoidance of him. They were all allowed to be strange today.

It was well past noon by the time they finished. There was no farewell ceremony. No one made the kind of funerary speech that might be appropriate for their sudden eviction. They just climbed into the last of the hovs, slid onto the bare metal benches and sat in silence as the hov pulled away.

Lio leaned his forehead against the cool, scratched glass of the window. Midway down the mountain, Yorune let out a soft curse. He spotted the reason for it a moment later. Rumbling up the opposite side of the mag lane was an enormous hov twice the size of theirs, stamped with the spiked tree symbol of the Fennec region's elite Enlightenment units. The Enlightenment hov towed a bright red excavator, its long neck folded in like a slumbering beast. They were going to take that thing and unleash its jaws on Opalina.

A seat ahead of him, Teres slumped forward, trying to muffle sobs against her arm. Yorune and Rosareen leaned into her, folding her in a hug from either side. Aziri, who had been sitting stiffly next to Lio and refusing to look any way but forward, drooped a moment a later. Lio pulled him closer, tucking his arm through his friend's. Hot tears soaked into the thin fabric at his shoulder.