City of Ruins - By Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page 0,2
I’d go.
Until now.
My team and I fly in on six orbit-to-ground skips, and land them in the spaceport at the edge of the Basin. We’re in the City of Vaycehn, but it doesn’t look like a city here. There are buildings, and a lot of dry brown ground. We’re only on the ground long enough to disembark from our skips and sign them into their ports. Then we get into the six government-owned hovercarts that were, Ilona discovered, one of the only ways to travel in Vaycehn.
We left my ship, Nobody’s Business, docked on Wyr’s orbital business station. The Business has a cloned identity, one we adopted when I became a fugitive inside the Empire, and that’s how the Business is registered with Wyr. Fortunately no one seems to care who we are, so long as we spend money planetside.
We’re spending a lot of money to come here. I look at this visit as an experiment; I’m not sure our search for stealth technology should even include land. All of the stealth technology we’ve discovered so far has been in space.
But Ilona thinks differently. She has hired the ground team—with my supervision—and she believes in this project.
I do not.
In fact, part of me wants this project to fail spectacularly. Then I never have to think about land-based operations again.
The hired pilots fly us into the Basin. I sit behind the copilot, separated by a clear wall. I almost wish the cockpit was blocked off so that I can’t see what these people are doing.
These pilots aren’t one-tenth as good as I am. They make tiny mistakes that would kill them in the tight situations I’ve flown through.
But they know the Basin, and they’re cocky. They come in too fast, going deep at the beginning of the crevice that marks the Basin, and get too close to the stone walls for my comfort. I grip the armrests so hard I’m probably leaving indentations.
I hate cocky pilots, particularly ones whose skills clearly aren’t up to an emergency. Should the wings of the hovercart nick one of the stone walls, the craft will spin out of control. From my vantage, I can’t see any automatic overrides that will prevent such an accident.
And I don’t have time to break through that clear wall ahead of me, hit a few buttons, and stop the craft from spinning before it crashes.
If something happens, I’d go down with the craft, just like everyone else.
The bumpy ride makes it hard to enjoy the scenery. Behind me, the main team—Ilona, Gregory, Lentz, and Bridge—talk about the mission ahead.
They are all scientists and researchers. Never before have I brought them to a site without examining it first. They’re excited, thinking that maybe they’ll be able to be actual explorers.
Maybe by their definitions, they will.
But I’ve also brought a full dive team as well as some archeologists and a few historians. And I’ve brought the Six. They’re scattered throughout the other craft because if one of these things goes down, I don’t want to lose all of our most valuable people.
We land on a wide patch of empty ground. Other hovercarts are parked in the distance, and large buildings outline the empty middle.
I’m glad we have a lot of room for the landing. We still bounce on the ground’s surface—something I would never allow one of my pilots to do— and it takes several seconds for the rocking motion caused by the bouncing to cease.
The doors open, and I sneeze as planetside air filters in. Planetside air has unfamiliar scents—-in this case, both sweet and dry.
Most of the air I breathe is recycled. It has a faint metallic edge, and sometimes a warning staleness. I’m used to that. I’m not used to air that has a taste, air that tickles my nose and makes me feel a little light-headed.
This air is also warm. I’d been warned that Wyr was a hot place, but I’d also been told that Vaycehn was one of the coolest locations.
If this is cool, then I don’t want to visit any other site on the planet. I’m already sweating as I step off the craft. The metal railing of the makeshift stair is warm beneath my touch, even though it’s only been in the light from Wyr’s sun for a few minutes.
Heat shimmers across the pavement in little waves that look like turbulence before a planetside storm. I’ve already decided I don’t like it here, and this is only the first of thirty days.