He was very much in control of himself, calm and relaxed on the surface at least, even when he was telling me what he wanted me to do if he didn't come through with me. Basically get off the platform and get back on, since that might be all that was required. If not, head for the next platform. He'd made me read through all the information about Cruzatch before we came to Muina, which hadn't really made me more comfortable about being anywhere near them.
"You're facing up to this very well," he said, finally. "But I know that you must be nervous."
I shrugged. "Would be stupid not to be. But it's got to be easier than last time, after all, even if I get stuck there by myself."
He sighed, and gave me a quick hug (which made me feel hot all over – it's very different when Maze does that to when Lohn does). "The first few moments after arrival will be critical," he said. "You will have the advantage of surprise – don't waste it."
We met up with the rest of First Squad and levitated over to the amphitheatre, where the other squads were waiting with a mix of greensuits and greysuits. I was totally distracted by tiny flakes of white swirling and drifting around us as we flew. Two trips to Thredbo hasn't made snow any less of a novelty to me and I said as we dropped down to the amphitheatre: "We have to have an epic snowball fight if it gets deep enough."
"The frozen rain?" Lohn asked. Tare doesn't have a word for snow, though I guess old Muinan must. I'd taught them the Earth word for snow instead. "How do you fight with it?"
"You scrunch it into balls and throw it at each other. And you can make forts to hide behind. But for fun," I emphasised, smiling hello to everyone waiting about in the cold. "Not to figure out the most efficient way to kill things in snowy places or anything."
Maze shook his head slightly – I think he thought I was putting on a brave face or something – but said: "All right – if there's enough snow we'll have an epic ball of snow fight. Ready now?"
I nodded, and he brought me into mission channel, adding over it: "We've all been fully briefed. Let's do this."
Four squads are a lot of people, and the amount of machinery which has been installed in the platform room, along with various technicians, made it feel quite close and cramped. But warmer than up top, at least.
"Verifying equipment function," said the one technician who was in the main mission channel.
Maze handed me back the heavier relay, and then had me take the 'carting Cass about' position, and bound our suits together as best he could with my chest armour interfering. Zee got up on the platform with an even more powerful drone, since they were hoping I might bring everything through which was on the platform, whether or not I was touching it.
"Clear to begin," said one of the bluesuits over the mission channel, and Maze lifted us both up and dropped down on the platform.
It worked. Even to the point of bringing Zee and the drone through with us. Maze let his breath out, and he and Zee shared a look of total relief, even as they both reacted to this weird, crystalline web filling the room. It made a little dome over the top of the platform, and was particularly thick on the side which was broken, hiding the cisterns below.
There were two Cruzatch, over by the room's entrance, but before they could do anything they had to hastily dodge the pieces of rubble and shattered wall Maze threw at them. The crystalline stuff snapped and broke apart.
"Blocking the entrance till we know more about what this is," Maze said, already busily doing so. He just shoved the Cruzatch out with the slabs of fallen wall and then piled the stone up.
While he was busy fishing up bits of fallen stone and preventing the Cruzatch from getting back into the room, Zee extruded a bit of her uniform into a thin cloth and wrapped it around one end of a stick of broken crystal, setting it there like a handgrip.
"Three or four dozen in the immediate area," Zee said, taking the heavy relay from me and handing me the stick of crystal. "We'll hold them out of the room. Bring back the rest of the squad, and get some kind of initial impression on this."
Maze swept a corner of the room clear and shifted us and the big drone off the platform. "Satellite signal not reaching," Zee told him, and he nodded and then picked me up physically and dropped me back on the platform.
I shifted back to Pandora immediately, the suddenness of it a bit disorienting since I'd expected a delay. Blinking, I looked around at the circle of waiting Setari, then slid back off the platform, saying rapidly: "Forty Cruzatch, and the room is full of crystal – some kind of trap. Maze wants to know what it is. He's barricaded the entrance."
Ruuel was conveniently nearby, so I handed the stick to him as a greysuit materialised at my elbow and insisted on shining a light in my eyes and making me follow it. The rest of First Squad climbed on the platform and – when the greysuit said they couldn't see any immediate impact on me – Second Squad joined them.
The faintest brush of fingers on my arm brought my attention back to Ruuel, who had enhanced and now touched one bare finger very lightly to the crystal stick. He was still looking tired, but calmly analytical as he gazed down at the crystal.
"Good instinct," he said, at last. "The elementals – fire, light, electricity particularly – will cause it to become a gas. Not poisonous. The intention of this is to capture."
"Understood," Grif from Second Squad said, and I found myself lifted back on the platform, Ketzaren and Alay flanking me even before my feet touched the stone.
The next couple of minutes were pretty frantic. Cruzatch are dangerous close-combat fighters, and their claws can cut through things: not quite as easily as a light-sabre, but enough to mean that Maze's barricade wasn't holding. And there were dozens of the things. The telekinetics took point, using the splintering rock to force them backward, out of the trapped room. I was sent straight back to Pandora, to bring Third and Fourth Squad, and the Setari went full-out once they were out of the range of the crystal.
Ketzaren and Alay kept me close, but moved me out of the platform room, even though Maze had broken up most of the crystal and shoved the pieces off to one side. By the time I got outside the battle was aerial, and the Cruzatch were retreating.
"Don't pursue individually," Maze said, and the Setari dropped down to gather in the very centre of Kalasa, then broke into two – Second and Third staying at the central point with me, while First and Fourth vanished into a big building about four levels up.
I didn't like that: listening to Maze's occasional terse instructions but not able to see what was happening. The Cruzatch tried to ambush them, and it sounded like it got pretty hairy for a couple of moments. I guess my expression mustn't have been particularly guarded – First and Fourth Squad are most of the people I care about on this world – because Taarel put her hand on my shoulder for a moment and smiled at me, eyes full of confidence and reassurance. She really is so very kingly.
It was over relatively quickly, though, and we listened to them discussing what sounded like another malachite marble. The Cruzatch had apparently vanished through it much like I can use the platforms. For the short term the two squads used fallen rubble to block the entrance, then came back down to stand in the central circle.
"We'll report in and move on to phase two," Maze said, but then paused, looking up, and they all gazed up with him – not at any threat, but at Kalasa. Damaged, but still the city of the Lantarens. No-one said a word, they all just took a moment and looked.
I then spent the rest of the day playing taxi. Maze reported in, and I brought through a mixed bag of greensuits and greysuits. The Setari took the drone up to the highest point of the city, while the greysuits tried to decide where to start, and just before we called it a day a satellite finally succeeded in detecting it – it's on the other side of the world from Pandora and slightly south, on an island in one of the biggest lakes. The
Diodel
is on its way there now, stuffed with technicians, and Second Squad along for safety. They're going to start a settlement and try to work out how to get through the city's shield from the outside while another bunch chip away at it from within. The malachite marble/power stone doesn't seem to turn it off like at the Arenrhon installation.
No-one's allowed to stay inside Kalasa overnight ('night' in this case being when I'm off-duty), although there's half a dozen drones there, particularly around the re-sealed Cruzatch escape hatch. It was a long day of tentative exploration, though we did get a break for lunch – whereupon I was hugged by an awful lot of people (Nils blew in my ear for good measure, and laughed very wickedly at my reaction). I gather from something Eeli let slip that the Setari had been under strict orders to not worry me with discussions of how little they wanted me to get on any platforms. I'm back in medical again, but this time because they want to monitor me for aftereffects of being of taxi. I don't much like sleeping in medical because the greysuits insist on popping in and out of the room. I can track their movements, though they're still not as clear to me as the Setari.
There were crystal web traps on every single platform. I don't think standing on the platform would have been easier than last time, if I'd come through alone.
Friday, June 13
Wake up
I outdid myself last night.
It started out unremarkable. I focused on sheep going to sleep, dreamed predictably of sheep and woke myself up almost immediately. Zee was designated babysitter, sitting in the waiting room next door, but later she left and Ruuel came and sat next to me. And then two Cruzatch rose up at the end of the bed, grabbed an ankle each, and hauled.
There's no way to know where I would have ended up if Ruuel hadn't been there. The room's scanner shows him sitting in the half-lit room, relaxed in his chair, then straightening and looking intently at me, and then hurling himself forward and grabbing me as I abruptly upended. He only just managed a hold under my arms, and was almost pulled off his feet. The Cruzatch I was dreaming were very strong.
In my dream I screamed, but I make no sound on the log as blood spatters down over both of us and the sheet tangled with my legs catches alight. A panicking greysuit runs in as Ruuel uses telekinesis to pull the sheet away. Fortunately the second greysuit was less panicky and dropped a silver tinfoil sheet over it. But that was later. First Ruuel said, very clear and urgent into my ear: "It's a dream, Cassandra. Wake up."
I hadn't known. Or, on some level I had, but all this happened in the first few moments of my dream, so I'd barely had time to do more than process shock and pain. And then I made myself wake up and if Ruuel hadn't had incredible reflexes I probably would have face-planted into the floor.
Although I won't have the blood poisoning and chill and exhaustion this time around, I managed to injure myself worse than the real Cruzatch had. I've moved well beyond temporary marks that fade away, anyway, and now have a fine collection of inch-deep gouges, burns and bruises and a dislocated ankle along with hairline fractures. I remember very distinctly one of the greysuits saying in complete disbelief: "She dislocated her own ankle?" and suspect from the indrawn breath which followed that Ruuel must have said something particularly curt over the interface. That's the only thing I have any real recollection of for the first few minutes after breaking out of the dream, beyond feeling rigidly frozen, and absolutely determined not to let go of Ruuel. He just said: "Deep breaths," to me whenever I started to shake, and shifted me about as necessary so the medics could stop me from bleeding everywhere.
By the time they'd pumped me full of painkillers and put my ankle back the way it's supposed to be, both Maze and Mara had arrived. Mara took over the clutchee role for a change of clothes and room: necessary given the blood-spattered and charred state of both. All that and a really horrible drink made me calm down enough for my brain to start working.
Maze and Ruuel came to my new room after the greysuit had finished telling me exactly what I'd done to myself and how long it would take to fix. She was still wide-eyed about it all, and looked a bit regretful when Maze dismissed her with a word of thanks. Mara stayed helping me sit up at the top of the bed, resting me against her shoulder with an arm around my waist. I think I'd quite happily sleep that way if I didn't think it would drive her mad having to stay still half the night.
"Did you know that I was going to dream badly tonight?" I asked Ruuel. My voice gets so little-girl and small when I'm upset. I hate it. At least me speaking made Maze look slightly less concerned – I hadn't managed to do more than nod and shake my head before that.
"I considered it likely," Ruuel said, sounding as correct as usual, but I think he was relieved too. "You dealt with the need to return to Kalasa by facing it, by attempting to take a level of control preparing for it. Because it was necessary for you to not be afraid, you weren't. There was always a high chance that after the hurdle was past, and you were no longer steeled against it, the nightmare of your first visit would recur. Add to that cages, around every platform at Kalasa. After a day thinking through the implications, a nightmare about being kidnapped by Cruzatch."
That little speech put paid to any doubts I had left about Ruuel knowing I'm obsessed with him. He can see right through me. But I wasn't feeling very focused on romance at that moment.
"Cruzatch ever tried to capture Setari?"
"No. Their interest is almost certainly you."
Mara rubbed my arm, but Ruuel was right about me having thought most of this through yesterday. "If Cruzatch show up and offer to rescue me from evil and misguided Tarens, absolutely will set off alert straight away." I allowed myself to enjoy Maze's expression, then sighed. "Not so sure won't accidentally kidnap myself. Thought I was getting better at this."