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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Stephanie
We stretched the availablespace of Valeria’s shuttle to its limits. It was a decently large vessel, about the size of a school bus, but unlike a bus the interior wasn’t just devoted to seating. There was storage for food, weapons, and other supplies, beds that folded into the walls, and a small bathroom towards the back. A lot of the space had been loaded with equipment we’d taken from the big desert ship – equipment we needed to set up the new settlement and do our work. The front of the shuttle had the cockpit area with two large seats, Valeria, being the pilot, sat in one of those seats, strapped in. Taylor sat in the other cockpit seat, also strapped in. Their Bitter Sea mates, Grim and Tok, each stood behind their seats.
There were four other seats that unfolded from the walls with seatbelts, and Nasrin, Tilly, Fiona, and I occupied those. Four Sea Sand warriors found seats on the floor between boxes of bedding and drones and guns. There would be one Sea Sand warrior from each Sea Sand tribe at the new mountain settlement. One of them, Oxriel from Gahn Taliok’s tribe, was already in the mountains. Dalk, from Gahn Fallo’s tribe; Vaxilkai, from Gahn Buroudei’s tribe; and Bariok, from Gahn Baldor’s tribe were on the shuttle now. They’d been on the original mission beyond the Death Plains, so they were already familiar with the territory. Zoren, from Gahn Razek’s tribe, was also joining us, traveling out there for the first time.
“Normally, I wouldn’t fly with so many bums out of seats,” Valeria had said when we’d all piled in. “But, unfortunately, there’s no way around it this time. We have to fly out there with all this equipment and we might as well just get this all done in one trip.”
“Will anyone else be joining us at the settlement?” I’d asked her. She’d craned around in her seat, her deep brown eyes meeting mine from around the hulking red shadow of her mate.
“Not sure. Each of the Deep Sky Gahns may send a few delegates. Also, I’m pretty sure that Hakah Gog said Kohka will be joining us once he’s done escorting Varrow and Camille back to the Sea Sand settlement. He’ll join us on foot. There’s not much out there that can kill him, so he’ll be fine journeying on foot alone.”
I nodded. That made sense. We already had precedent for that – Zoey’s mate, Kor, had wandered around hostile territory for ages all on his own and he’d been fine. And he wasn’t even quite as big as a pure-blooded Bitter Sea warrior.
Once all the fragile-boned humans had gotten settled and adequately strapped in, we’d taken off.
From my seat, I couldn’t see much out the viewscreen without leaning forward and craning my neck. After a while, I gave up, since we’d gotten high enough that all I could see from this angle was bright, cloudless sky.
Luckily, the fact that half our group wasn’t strapped in didn’t become a problem. Valeria was a skilled, confident pilot, and she flew our invisible-to-the-naked-eye shuttle with practised ease. With the vessel’s powerful engines, the trip to the mountains that would have taken two weeks or more on foot took one full day.
I wonder how long it will take Gahn Errok to get here, I thought as Valeria announced our arrival in the Deep Sky territory. He’d arrived at the Sea Sand settlement a few days after the shuttle group, so it would maybe take him two or three days to fly back here.
Well, he can take his freaking time. I was not looking forward to whenever he was going to show up. I could only imagine that his ego would be even bigger in his own territory where everybody worshipped his every move and jumped to obey his commands.
My brooding thoughts about the cocky Gahn were disrupted by excited chatter and the intake of breaths all around me. I blinked, leaning forward as far as my straps would let me, angling my head to try to see out the viewscreen.
We’d descended since I’d last tried to look out. Or, maybe it was because the very ground had risen up all around us in steep peaks. There was no longer empty clear sky out there.
There were mountains.
Breathtaking mountains.
The setting sun shattered, exploding into millions of crystalline shards against the gorgeous peaks of high, sharp stone. Where the light hit the stone brightest, I could see that the mountains were mostly blue in colour, and would likely appear blue during daylight. But the warm, deep sunset turned many cracks and crags into other colours – shades of glimmering copper, indigo-spattered gold, silver-shadowed pink.
The sight wasn’t just beautiful. It was nostalgic in a deeply painful way.
I didn’t realize how much I missed these,I thought, sucking in a sharp breath and holding it, my eyes burning. Growing up in Alberta had meant many weekend and summer trips into the mountains with my mom, especially after my dad left when I was six. We’d used those trips as an escape. It was us against the world, and the mountains had been like our fortress.
We’d stopped going out there when I was in high school and she got too sick.
And then she’d died.
