Project: Starfire by R A Nargi

Author:R A Nargi [Nargi, R A]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bogwood Press
Published: 2022-07-05T04:00:00+00:00

I had a tough time sleeping that night, but eventually drifted off. I didn’t have any dreams, or if I did, I didn’t remember them. And, thankfully, I wasn’t woken in the middle of the night with news of another stowaway.

With the dawn came a flurry of activity as we finished loading the crawler and then tested all the systems for the fifth and sixth times. It was probably overkill, but better safe than sorry.

“Are you sure you won’t be needing me and Milton on your little expedition?” Etiela asked.

“I’ll feel much better knowing you’re safe and sound on the ship. But we’ll be in touch with Iniya along the way and may need your insight if we run into anything particularly weird.”

“Well, you know me, Jannigan. Always happy to jump on the honker and chat. Call if you need me. And that goes double for Milton.”

“Will do. Thanks, Etiela.”

Grannt passed out sidearms to me, Dora, and Lorro.

“What about me?” Aunt Tally asked.

“You ever fire a Weiss & Surrey 909, ma’am?” Grannt asked.

“Of course not, Major, but there’s a first time for everything.”

He smiled faintly. “Maybe. But not today.”

I said goodbye to the rest of the team and formally handed over the conn to Teeg. Then I joined Grannt, Dora, Aunt Tally, Lorro, and TenSix in the crawler and we set off.

“How’s it handling?” I asked Lorro, who had volunteered to be the crawler’s pilot.

“Like a five-legged varken in mud,” he said. “Thick, sticky mud.”

I guessed he was referring to the crawler’s handling, because the roadway itself seemed to be perfectly serviceable. From what I could tell, the surface was compacted gravel with well-defined edges. Various directional beacons helped us navigate out of the groundport and onto a major thoroughfare leading due west through the salt flat that Flash City was built upon.

Several dozen other vehicles had also exited the groundport and were moving west; most were multi-wagon articulated transports, hauling goods to the hinterlands.

“Not a lot to see out there,” Dora said.

“Reminds me a bit of the Spraguel Way,” Aunt Tally said. “On Harpallene. Has anyone been?”

No one had.

“It’s a bit out of the way. In the Southern Hemisphere. But the Way has some truly beautiful auroras, if you’re lucky enough to see them.”

For the first few hours, the road was relatively straight and rising gradually towards a line of jagged rust-colored hills and mesas in the distance.

Dora checked in with the Aeton every fifty kilometers or so. The comm seemed to be working fairly well, but we were still on the same side of the Arrases Mountains. Who knew how it would perform once we got into canyon country?

After passing through a small settlement named Hyketown at the foothills of the Arrases, we began to wind our way up into the higher elevations.

The road became narrower and narrower and twisted more and more, the higher we went. We also saw fewer and fewer vehicles on the road.

“According to this crappy excuse for a geo-tracking system, it looks like we’re about 150 klicks away from the turnoff to the Tomb,” Dora said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.