Na Viro by Gina Cole

Author:Gina Cole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Huia (NZ) Ltd
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE EDGE

Under Sotrakkar’s instruction, Tia helped navigate Pawta towards the whirlpool, Tijen Sky Hawk. Pawta responded well to Tia’s direction at the helm, and in any other circumstances she would have enjoyed this unusual co-pilot navigation experience with Sotrakkar. Dani’s words seeped into her mind. That Sotrakkar and her would make a good team. She brought her thoughts back to Leilani, stuck somewhere in the whirlpool.

‘Your mother told me that Toutouwai 5 launched a Thraean probe into the whirlpool and Leilani captured it,’ said Sotrakkar.

Tia twisted in the stone chair towards Oculum who sat near her at the bridge controls, a line of illuminated finger pads. They shrugged and their red shining locks splayed out, resplendent on their shoulders. In the navigation seat the embod shook her head, still restrained but now with free hands at rest on the console. How did the Academy have a Thraean probe? What trick was Dani trying to pull on them?

Tia smirked. ‘What probe? And why did she tell you?’

Sotrakkar coughed. ‘The Academy used Thraean probes to take readings inside the whirlpool. Dani says this one is important. Pawta will recognise any Thraean probe if there is one.’

Tia didn’t trust Dani. Sotrakkar now controlled the ship once more and Dani would hate it. Dani used ploy and duplicity.

Tia took a deep beath. ‘Maybe I’ll go and talk to her in the brig, try to find out more information.’

‘She won’t tell you anything,’ said Turukawa.

A black spot impeded Tia’s view through the lakescreen. She stood up to get a better sight line to the whirlpool, while Turukawa helped Sotrakkar to steer the ship towards the rim of the vortex. She had concocted into existence a flexible rope to replace the Academy’s painful safety restraints, which she’d decided the previous navigator who’d occupied her seat had conjured. The rope held her around the waist and stretched with her while she struggled to see through the lakescreen to the view outside the ship. She twisted her body to see around the black spot. Pawta listed and creaked on the approach to the maelstrom’s outer edges.

Tia collapsed against the lakescreen porthole, ruffling the surface water and making the outside view of the ship murky and unreadable. The rope pulled her from the water, or she would have drowned in the two-centimetre-deep lakescreen. The screen grabbed at every globule of water clinging to Tia’s face until it had taken it all back and stilled its surface into a flat, silvery veneer once more.

Oculum stood up from their seat and rushed to her side. ‘Are you alright?’

Tia stared at Tijen Sky Hawk. ‘I’m fine.’ She pointed to a mark on the lakescreen. ‘There’s a black spot in the way.’

‘I don’t see anything. Let me look at your iris circuitry. You may have a malfunction somewhere in there,’ said Oculum.

Tia swivelled to face them. They gazed into her right eye, a pinched expression of concentration on their face. She stared back and didn’t look away, even when it seemed they had been looking at each other for a long time.

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