Past Lives

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Olinda

Adiving bat dove at my head, the ring-shaped mouth snapping sharp, hooked teeth at me. I hugged the rock. The wind of its passage swept over me, carrying that fishy and musky scent.

On the rocks above, Drac hissed a warning at the chuffing bats.

This plan wasn’t working out how I’d expected. I reached up with my C’lacktal hand, finding a grip in the rock and pulled myself up. My scent-sight didn’t help much, except it did give me a warning when the diving bats got close enough to smell. I didn’t need to see more than their bluish blur to duck the swooping attacks.

Drac snarled again. His odor, the rust and blood stink of it, poured down over the rocks. It was a pearly color that almost made the Nosferan look angelic.

I concentrated on the traces he left, the odors forming an image in my mind. Without looking, I saw where he had grabbed, what hand and toe-holds he had used.

I climbed faster, following his route. Around us, the chuffing cries of the diving bats grew louder.

“Climb!”

Drac didn’t move. His wing swept out, attempting to catch another diving bat. This time the bat swept its wings back, stalling its flight, and landed right on the tough membrane of Drac’s wing. Scarlet vapors swirled out from his wing along with the sharp stinging scent of Nosferan blood.

I ducked another bat. At least a dozen of them swirled around us in an agitated cloud. I didn’t want to hurt them, but they weren’t giving me any choice.

Hanging on with my C’lacktal hand, I drew my Lottier 65 with the other. Firing nanoparalyzers coded for hundreds of species, along with shock darts to take down non-organics, it was an effective and mostly non-lethal weapon. Unless used up close against a fragile target. And if I missed, I might paralyze Drac, sending him to his death in the waves below.

More bats swept past. Their teeth barely missing me while the one still clung to Drac with sharp claws. He couldn’t reach the bat on the backside of his wing.

I fired a single dart at the thickest part of the diving bat, that spot right between its shoulders at the base of the neck.

The dart hit right on target, severing the bat’s spine. It fell bonelessly off Drac, tumbling past me and against the rocks below.

“Drac! Climb!”

Drac moved at last. He crawled up the rocks, finding places to grip faster than I could manage alone. I followed his scent trail upwards while the diving bats continued to sweep past, crying their chuffing agitated cries.

I followed Drac. A few meters further up we passed a series of ledges, cracks across the black rock. There, among the pale pastel green and blues of the vegetation clinging to the rock, were bowl-shaped nests made of bits of bone and dried fish skin. Each nest held a single dark, bumpy egg.

Which ones belonged to the diving bats we had killed? Would the others care for the eggs?

Drac kept climbing on past the nests. Diving bats swooped in and landed in front of the nests. Each spread wings a meter across and blew their chuffing cries at us. Glinting dark eyes watched each move we made.

After we climbed past their nests, the diving bats didn’t pursue us. I put aside thinking about the bats and focused on our objective.

A fortress sat on top of this peak. No roads connected the peak to the main island. It was one of at least a hundred similar islands just off the coast, out past the scab district of Olinda. All along the equatorial island chain that made up most of the habitable land on the planet were similar islands carved by wind and wave. Some attached when the tides went out, others by rock arches, natural bridges carved out by wave beneath.

This peak sat alone within view of the main island but surrounded by water at all times. The fortress on top was biocrete, a gleaming white structure of spires and walls that melted right onto the supporting rock. The only way in was by air, and flitter traffic was closely watched. Armed defenses protected the fortress from the approach by air.

We’d chosen to make the unexpected approach by water to the base of the peak, and then climbing the exterior. Our observations had suggested that this approach would be the most likely way to get us up and inside without attracting attention.

The biocrete wall wasn’t far above now. The walls were smooth, unscalable, and unbroken. Except for one opening.

A waterfall poured out of the fortress, above and to my left. Orbital scans showed the water came from a small, naturally occurring lake at the heart of the fortress. The water came from the frequent rainfall, collected in the caldera of this peak, and drained out through an opening in the side. When the fortress was grown the biocrete surrounded the opening but didn’t block it.

That was our way in.

It’d be guarded, of course, by a variety of security measures. I figured I could deal with those.

Getting to the opening was another difficulty. It lay higher on the biocrete wall. No way to climb there. A flitter approaching that close would be detected and fired upon.

But with Drac’s help, we had a chance.

Drac reached the end of the volcanic rock, right beneath the biocrete. I climbed up the rocks beside him. The walls above blocked the moonlight and gave us deep shadows at the base of the wall.

“Are you ready for this?” I asked Drac.

“Yes. I shall not fail you, Esteemed One.”

I ignored the title. I didn’t need reminding of my past right now. There’d be time for that later.

I took out an auto-anchor and placed it in a deep crevice in the rock face. I triggered it. There was a chance that the fortress would have seismic sensors to detect something like that, which is why we didn’t use them while climbing. One might be overlooked. Bits of rock must flake off the peak all the time. Placing one anchor might not look all that different.

Next, I attached a line to the anchor and handed the spool over to Drac. He took the ring with his dexterous foot and launched himself out into the air. Massive wings beat, and I hugged the rock, turning my face from the wind. In my scent-sight Drac was a glowing pearly form, blurred and indistinct, rising above me along the biocrete wall.

The line played out beneath him as he flew. I was too big for Drac to carry me. A couple Nosferans working together could manage and had in the past, but more would have increased our chance of detection. And one was too much as it was.

The only reason I was working with Drac was to get Muriel and Dyami back home. If that was even possible. The answer to that question was above us, inside the fortress.

In moments Drac landed on the narrow edge beside the waterfall. A grate across the opening blocked the entrance. Drac was nearly invisible in the deep shadows above the waterfall.

He moved, securing the spool. The line in front of me went tight against the rocks, rising up to the waterfall above.

My turn. I took out two small magnetic grips and slipped them on over my hands. My C’lacktal tentacles twined around each other out of the way.

The line was almost impossible to see, even with my eyes. When the sun came up the light might catch the fiber, but we’d be gone by then.

I reached out with one grip. It snapped to the line. I snapped the second on and walked up the rocks onto the biocrete wall.

The line held. I walked right up to the waterfall, released the grip and grabbed onto the grating over the opening. The biocrete grew right over the rocks, but the uneven shapes around the waterfall provided some slick footing. The other side of the grating was a dark tunnel half filled with rushing water. Big enough for us, not by much,

Talking, over the sound of the waterfall, was impossible. And unnecessary. We both knew what came next. I took out chameleon charges. I passed a set to Drac before going to work on my side.

Each charge was a small gray rod in the case. I placed the first and pressed the arming spot. The material softened and flowed around the bar, shimmered and took on the matte black color of the bar itself. A close examination could reveal that the last few centimeters of the bar were fatter than the rest. No one would get a chance to check.

We finished placing the charges. This was a tricky point. If it went wrong, I was going to be in trouble.

I stepped down into the water. Cold! Like ice running past my legs. The bottom of the bed was smooth, slicked by all that water running past. The water threatened to grab me and shove me right over the cliff.

Feeling as best I could with numbing feet, I found places on each side to brace my feet against the rock. I held onto the grate at the center.

I nodded to Drac. “Blow it.”

Whether he heard me or not, he got the message. Drac clung to the biocrete with three limbs and reached over to the belts that ran around his body from shoulder to groin.

He carried the trigger in a pouch on his belts. His impossibly big eyes blinked. For a second a tiny pink tongue poked out of his wrinkled pug-like face past sharp fangs.

He pushed the button.

The chameleon charges went off with a sharp snap and an electrical flash. The grate came free in my hands. My foot slipped.