Tim checked. It was an apt description.
“How much damage?” Riina asked, her voice low.
“Just a glancing hit, a singe.” He flashed her a quick smile. “We’ll be fine.”
If everything went well, they’d be fine, but one thing he had learned. Humans didn’t like their “fine” to be qualified.
He’d connected himself to the seismic. They couldn’t afford to wait for Lt. Dish to give warning.
“I think we’re passing over a city,” Riina said. “I’m showing life signs, lots of them. Will we have trouble picking up Dr. Walker’s life sign, do you think?”
“Not if the location is as isolated as he claimed it would be,” Tim said.
Riina held onto the sides of her seat, even though she was firmly strapped in. She was reminded of the thing called a video game that one of the Expedition members had shown her.
She’d played it well enough but had thought it not realistic.
Now, she would have been happy for less realism.
Swiftly changing angles as they hurtled forward.
Spasms of light in multiple colors both in the sky and falling from the sky.
Earth heaving upwards at each hit. Then the surge that came after the hit, as if something were being sucked upwards.
And they were dodging both that from above and that from below.
They got “singed” more than once. More warning lights appeared on the controls, but Tim’s attention never wavered.
Riina knew he was probably receiving data both visually and through implants. If he weren’t, they’d probably already have been a smoking hull on the ground.
“Why,” Lt. Dish’s voice sounded strained, “are they attacking this planet? It seems pretty harmless to me. A little crazy with all the seismic, but harmless. It’s not like they are near enough to anyone to cause problems. And didn’t you say they weren’t space capable yet?”
The flood of questions breaking the silence was probably more about release of tension than a true desire for answers.
Plus, Riina didn’t have answers to her questions. They had access to the same data.
“There is the Vorthari,” Trac pointed out.
“But they are underground,” Lt. Dish said.
“They are targeting areas of high seismic activity,” Riina reminded them, gritting it out as Tim made a series of twisting turns that left her feeling like she’d been tied in knots.
And, if Dr. Walker’s data was correct, his interaction with the Vorthari had been in an area of high seismic.
“They might be after the Vorthari, and not the inhabitants of Arroxan Prime,” she said. It wouldn’t be much comfort to the people down below, lost in the dark and under attack.
But if the Vorthari were the target, based on what she saw? There were a lot of them.
“They would have avoided building on those areas,” she said, as much to comfort herself as them. But the area in the pole where Dr. Walker had arranged their meetup was also registering seismic. Or follow-on explosions.
“We might be too late,” she said.
Tim didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. But she saw his lips thin. He didn’t like losing any more than she did.
13
It wasn’t much of a relief when they came within scanning range of the rendezvous point.
