“Yes, well, as always, we can thank Her Majesty for meddling in our marital affairs.”
“At least we have
marital
affairs now,” Orli pointed out, lifting her slender hand and holding aloft the gleaming diamond ring that she now wore.
“Dude, if you ever cheat on her, I’ll come kick your ass myself,” Roberto said. “Even if you turn me into a cockroach or something, I’ll crawl up your ass and eat your spleen.”
Altin laughed. “We’re both lucky to have such a friend as you, Roberto.”
Roberto grinned. “You are. And I’m serious.” He winked at Orli, then looked out at the excavation again. “So, what do you guys think? We’ve been here for ten minutes. They’re not exactly falling all over themselves to send a welcome party out.”
“Well, I don’t know about welcome parties,” Altin said, glancing briefly to Roberto before looking out again. “But I should think you’d be grateful that they haven’t sent out any troops. I’d hate to see the soldiers that came out of those things.” Altin watched through the whirling gusts, great sheets of red sand flinging about as if giants threw it at them by the fistful. It struck with such force sometimes that the sound made it through the thick layers of steel and glass, a loud and sudden rasp that startled them and set all three of their heads jerking back reflexively.
However, despite the sandy thickness of the bestirred atmosphere, he could see the enormous digging machines reaching out with those monstrous spoon-ended arms, scooping up dirt and tossing it into the wind as well. Mechanical giants steadily at work. From the perspective they had there in the boot, the ships from which the machines had come blocked out the horizon, the four alien vessels rising up out of sight into the churning sky and vanishing into the distance left and right.
“Oh, don’t think I’m not glad about that,” Roberto said. “You’re worried about soldiers, but can you imagine the war machines people like that would make? I mean, look at what their damn diggers look like.”
“I think I’d rather not imagine such vehicles,” he said. “So I really do hope they are friendly in the end.”
“If it was me in those ships, I’d have sent out a security detail by now to find out who in the hell we are,” Roberto said. “At least a probe or a robot scout or something.”
“As would I,” Altin agreed. “So I think it is a good sign.”
“Maybe they don’t even know we’re here,” Orli suggested, moving away from the window and sitting at the computer console near the wall. “We are pretty small compared to them.” She pulled up the feed from the probe Deeqa had launched shortly after the objects first appeared. Readings began to come through, but the screen flashed, and the computer reset. She waited patiently for the reboot, knowing well that the cause of the fluctuation was the shield Altin had cast around the tower to protect them from the elements. The tower could be pressurized if need be now—all but the battlements anyway—thanks to Master Sambua’s clever design, but that was a process, and one they hadn’t begun just yet.
“Or maybe they don’t care,” Roberto said. “We could be like ants or something.”
The computer came back to life and called up the information again. It was only a minute before she had the numbers up from before. “There’s still nothing else we can get from them,” she confirmed after going through several different scans. “And the hole is already two and a half miles deep.”
“What the hell are they after? Is there gold down there? Titanium? Uranium? Something I never heard of?” Roberto asked.
“Given the timing of their arrival, I think we’ve already established it could only be one thing,” Altin said.
Orli returned to stand between them again. “They are sitting right above him,” she confirmed. “And at the rate of three-quarters of a mile per day, they’ll get to the heart chamber in three weeks.”
Altin harrumphed, though it was barely audible. “Well, that’s why we’re here. Her Majesty is as curious to find out why they are here as we are. She’s stopped short of claiming the world for Prosperion, what with Yellow Fire coming to life, but let’s just say she’s very interested in his safety all of a sudden.”
“Let’s just say she’s very interested in any potential source of Liquefying Stone,” Orli clarified.
Altin’s lips curled in tightly, but he said nothing.
“When is
Citadel
supposed to arrive?” Roberto asked. “If she is so concerned, why are they taking so long?”
“I confess to wondering that myself,” said Altin. “But Her Majesty is most reluctant to distribute the Liquefying Stones already in her possession, so I’m sure she’s accounting for each one as she hands them out, creating the delay.”
“Really?” Orli’s incredulity was entirely rhetorical. “The
Citadel
mages were the ones that handed them over to her to begin.” She rolled her eyes and looked at Roberto, hoping he shared her impatience for the royal stinginess, but Roberto only shrugged. He was getting used to it.
“Her Majesty has things afoot that I am not privy to just yet,” Altin said, staring back out the window at the alien excavation under way. “And the fact I am not privy to them suggests that they are not the sort of thing your people would approve.”
“Why
my
people?” Orli asked.
“Because of you and me, of course. Whatever she is doing she intends to keep to herself. Or at very least from you. I believe it is quite likely she’s briefing her people on that very thing as she hands out the Liquefying Stones.”
“Well, if that’s the case, then why did she tell you she wants you back in command of
Citadel
? Why now? Is it really just because of these aliens?”
“I truly do not know.”
“Well, whatever she’s doing,” Roberto said, “I think we ought to go check that stuff out. If they aren’t going to send a welcome party out to us, we should send one to them. You know, grab a couple of bottles of good Prosperion booze and go say hi.”
Orli made a gasping sort of sound at the back of her throat. “Roberto, that has to be the lamest idea I’ve ever heard.”
“What? Why?”
“Umm … because it’s stupid. Do you really need another reason after that?”
“Why is it stupid? We’re sitting here waiting for them to send a welcome party out to us, but now we’re too good to do the same?”
Altin’s cheek twitched up on one side. There was some truth to that. He glanced to Roberto and nodded that he agreed.
“See?” Roberto said, squaring on Orli. “Let’s go check it out. This is boring. And you said yourself they might not have seen us. Look at all this dirt blowing around. And compared to them, we’re tiny. We’re like some weird little piece of bacteria to them, sitting here hoping they’ll discover us in all this blowing dust.”
“Yeah, and then when they do discover us,” she said, “they’ll hit us with an antibacterial blast and get back to business before any of them gets sick.”
“Fine, then we can be like an amoeba or something. They don’t make people sick.”
She groaned, exasperated, and put her hands on her hips. “Yes, they do. God, Roberto. Be serious. You know exactly what I mean.”
He looked to Altin and shrugged, hands out to his sides, helpless, his expression the very essence of innocence. Altin knew him well enough to know better by now. But that changed little. Altin was in agreement, and his adventurous nature had already begun to get the better of him. “I say we do it,” he said. “And I’ll admit, I’ve been curious to try out that wheeled contraption you’ve parked in here.” He nodded in the direction of the rugged ground rover Orli had brought into the boot. “Every time I see it, I can’t help but feel it might be fun to take it out and see what it can do. I should think this is the exact reason we have it here, which was your idea, I’d like to point out.”
“I should think it is, most indubitably too,” Roberto said, doing his best approximation of Altin’s Prosperion accent and making taunting faces at Orli all the while. “I’ll drive! Besides, I want to set up a signal relay to boost the satellite. These storms are a bitch to see through. It will be easier to watch from orbit. Two birds with one stone, you know?” He was already going for his spacesuit.
Orli ran to intercept. “Absolutely not. This is the dumbest idea either of you have ever had since … since your last dumb idea. What is wrong with you two? I just barely got married, for Christ’s sake, and now you want to get us all killed?”
“Sometimes you’re such a candy-ass, Orli,” Roberto said. “Grow a pair. Life is short. Have some fun.” He pulled a spacesuit down off the rack. Altin was beside him doing likewise.
“Oh my God!” Orli said. “Are you serious? Both of you?”
“It will be fun,” Roberto insisted.
She looked to Altin, who smiled as he went around the back side of the suit rack to step out of his robes. He took his spacesuit from its place and began pulling it on. “Yes, it will be,” he agreed. “Come along, Orli. Not every alien in the universe will be the nasty kind. Just look how nicely you and I got on.”
“Yeah,” said Roberto. “Just look.”
Orli could have brought up the body counts of the last interplanetary war, but she saw that it was useless. The two of them were already devoted to the plan. With a sigh, and less modesty than Altin, she reached for her own spacesuit. In short order she had it on and pressurized.
Soon after, the three of them were bouncing along the rocky terrain, often having to drive around large boulders or deep crags in the ground. The wind blew so hard against the vehicle that, at times, Roberto had to fight to keep it going straight. Orli pointed out with each successive blast that what they were doing was a terrible idea.
They stopped long enough for Roberto to set up a signal repeater for his satellite and to get a camera pointed at the dig site, then continued on their way.
Soon after, they were very close, and still no giant, mechanized soldiers appeared, no multi-headed aliens with prodigious blasting rays arrived to decimate them. Nothing came out to do anything to them at all. In fact, they drove right up to the side of one of the enormous digging machines, and Roberto, despite Orli’s protests, parked the vehicle, got out, and climbed up one of the giant tracks that encircled its many massive wheels—each of which measured ninety-five yards high.
He climbed it easily—with a helpful gravity adjustment via the Higgs prism on his belt and the fact that the track’s trailing side protected him from the wind—but the moment he conquered the ascent and climbed atop the wide track, a gust of wind blasted him so hard he flew right off over the edge. Were it not for the fact his sealed spacesuit worked just like a “box” for teleporting, he might not have survived, but Altin’s quick reaction with a teleport spell snatched the screaming Spaniard from the teeth of the wind before he could be blown entirely away. Unfortunately, however, the use of magic reset Altin’s suit controls to default settings, at which point Orli had to immediately put herself to work getting the mixture, temperatures, and timers set properly again.
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Roberto muttered the whole time Orli was at it. “That was so fucking close.”
Orli’s gloved fingers played the controls of the wizard’s spacesuit with the dexterity of a pianist, but, busy as she was, she managed to unleash a barrage of I-told-you-so remarks, completely unsympathetic to Roberto’s fright. Something about that seemed to calm him, though, and before she’d finished fixing Altin’s suit, he was grinning again.
“God damn, Altin. I swear, if you hadn’t married her already, I’d marry you right now,” Roberto said. “That was some piece of timing, bro.”
Altin grinned through his helmet at his friend as he nodded. “I’m happy to have helped. But let’s not do anything that reckless going forward, shall we? It seems my suit doesn’t like that particular spell at all, and my dear wife may not be in the mood to fix it next time.”
Roberto grinned, the adrenaline receding enough that he could laugh. “Man, you should have seen the view up there. It’s no wonder they haven’t sent anyone out to talk to us. Seriously, you guys were invisible down here. I seriously think they don’t know we’re out here.”
“I wonder if perhaps we should consider knocking,” Altin said.
Orli paused long enough to look up at him, her expression beyond bewilderment, but when she saw that he was completely serious, she sighed, shook her head, and resumed the muttering of profanities as she continued working on his suit.
“Knocking?” Roberto asked. The exultation of his experience still burned brightly in his eyes, a sort of pleasant madness settling upon him, the euphoria of risk.
“Yes. Perhaps they have some sort of … I don’t know, a knocker or cord,” Altin postulated.
“You mean like on that big tongue thing these backhoes came out on? That’s kind of a welcome mat, if you ask me.”
Altin frowned at the unfamiliar term, but knew by the movement of Roberto’s thumb what he was talking about. “Yes. There may be something there we can activate. A button or a lever, perhaps a symbol to push, something of the sort your people use for everything.”
Roberto’s grin might have been described as maniacal as he agreed. “Let’s do it!”
“You guys are making me feel like the old, fuddy-duddy grandma here,” Orli said as she finished the reset on Altin’s suit, “but how many times do I have to point out that this is a terrible idea? You could have died just now, Roberto, and Altin might have too if something worse had happened to this damn suit.”