Challenged (Mates for the Raskarrans #8)

Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Rardek

M y cock is so hard it strains against my leathers. I want nothing more than to continue probing at my Angie’s defences - to give her teasing words and touches, pushing her a little further with every passing moment until she opens to me. Lets me show her the pleasures such a fine and fierce female deserves from her male.

But I intend to have the rest of my seasons to do such things with my Angie. Right now, there are only two sunsets, maybe three, before the tribe will be looking to leave. I need to solve the puzzle of the blight - ensure it is nothing more sinister than a particularly potent sickness that a burn will contain.

So I strive to ignore my aching cock. Ask her if she will talk through my puzzle with me, as we have talked through hers.

I only hope she can be of more assistance to me than I was to her.

“Uh, sure,” she says, not sounding at all sure. “We can talk about it.”

I nod, then close my eyes, sending away the travel tent and bringing us instead to the clearing in the forest where Anghar stepped into the rotten roots. I open my eyes to my Angie staring all around her, looking round at the trees, then up at the canopy overhead.

“You have not been outside yet?”

“No.” Her cheeks start to pink. “I, uh, where I come from, there isn’t any wilderness like this. I’m used to city life, not…”

She gestures around us.

“So you are afraid to come out here?” I say, shooting her a teasing grin.

She scowls at me, but the expression quickly shifts, and she looks down at the floor as she speaks.

“Coming out here - it’s the last thing left. Once I do that, there are no more chances for this to all be some elaborate hoax.” She looks up at me then, her eyes imploring. “I know it’s real. I think I knew that even before I tried to pull your tail off.”

“But it is one thing to accept a truth, another to accept a reality.”

Once again, shock flickers across her face - she is not used to hearing her own thoughts from someone else’s mouth. Not used to having someone pay close enough attention to see the workings of her headspace.

“I’m getting there. I’ll come outside soon. Meet everyone soon. I know I need to.” She’s quiet for a moment. Contemplative. Then she looks at me, and all the vulnerability, the undercurrents of sorrow are gone. She is serious. Focused. “Weren’t you worried we didn’t have much time left here? You should start explaining.”

“Easier to show you.” I rise to my feet, holding my hand out to her. She hesitates for only a beat of her heartspace before taking it.

I lead her over to the trees, showing her the signs of the blight - just as I showed Anghar and Gregar earlier. I tell her about the absence of forest creatures, how the trees seem to be most affected close to the base. How the females have assured me that the building cannot make the trees sick.

“They’re right about that,” she says.

I show her the place where Anghar slipped, the rotten mulch of roots his foot left behind. The rancid smell of the ichor follows us into the dream and my Angie’s nose wrinkles.

“That’s disgusting,” she says.

“Worse when it touches your skin.” I scratch absently at my hands, even though the itching is long gone. “I got the ichor on my hands and it caused much irritation and itching. It is what drove me into the showers that day.”

Her cheeks heat. When I laugh, she scowls at me again, fire flashing in her eyes.

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

“Why would I, when it is such an amusing and pleasant memory for me?”

“Amusing? I tried to pull your tail off.”

“Perhaps that was the part I found pleasant.”

I waggle my eyebrows at her. She rolls her eyes at me, wise now to my teasing ways. And it is funny, but it thrills me as much to see her unaffected as it does to see her blush and squirm.

“It’s odd,” she says, her expression going thoughtful. “Rot is gross, but I didn’t think it would cause a reaction like that. Unless your skin is sensitive?”

“I can be very sensitive,” I say, curling suggestion around the words. “But no, I am not prone to rashes and irritations.”

“Then why so itchy?”

It is another question with no answer.

I tell her the rest of it - the mapping, what the four of us found. The burn that we will need to do to stop the blight spreading further. Like Jaskry earlier, I draw out a map on the forest floor. My Angie smirks, and then we’re back in her workplace, my dirt map now glowing on the table. She goes up to it, leaning against the edge as she looks down at my drawing, rather than taking a seat.

“I’m no epidemiologist,” she says. “But that does not look like any sort of disease spread that I’ve ever seen. Are there any features in the area that might account for the shape of the spread? A physical barrier? Does the path that Jaskry took run through a ravine or something?”

“No ravine, no. There is a stream that runs here.” I touch my finger to the surface of the table, trace the path of the stream. “And the Mercenia hut sits at the top of a slight incline.”

“It would have to. Building a basement in a rainforest was going to be a bad idea otherwise.”

She touches a palm to the table, then lifts it upwards, the light drawing following the path of her hand and rising out of the table. It does not rise up flat, though, rather taking the shape we have described.

“The table is a visualiser,” my Angie says. “It contains 3D projection equipment. We use it to show data to clients in more interesting ways. Normally you have to build the models in advance using a computer program, but… Dreamspace. Figured I could cut some corners.”

Maldek has spoken to me of the things Brooks did in the dreamspace, but it is still quite something to see what amazing things human headspaces are capable of. I lean over the table, getting my face as close to the light model as I can without touching it. It must draw on more than just my Angie’s memories, because at the top of the hill, is a tiny representation of the Mercenia hut - the hut she has only ever seen from the inside. I point a finger at it.

“This is another thing that puzzles me,” I say.

“The base?”

“No, the space around it.”

I shift us back into the forest, but this time, right at the edge of it, looking out across the clearing between the tree line and the Mercenia hut.

“This area immediately around the hut - the forest has not regrown here at all. It feels to me like a sign that the hut must be responsible for the blight somehow. Nineteen seasons is a long time for the forest to remain at bay.”

My Angie folds her arms across her chest, but it is in thought, not anger. “It’s a really long time for a blight to kill a tree as well, I imagine.”

I nod. “Also true. You are starting to see how this, like everything you have been thinking on, does not make any sense.”

She remains quiet for a moment, but when she turns to me, there is something like satisfaction in her expression.

“This, I can explain,” she says, gesturing to the space before us. “You see how the top floor of the base is smaller than the ground level? It’s hard to judge just for looking, but I expect the basement is bigger again.”

I nod. It is how the underground rooms have seemed to me, and I have not even been in all of them.

“Well, I think that the rooms people have been able to access - the pod room, the lab spaces, the office space, the showers-” A delightful blush comes into her cheeks. “-is only some of what’s down there.”

The table appears in front of us, looking somehow even more out of place than the Mercenia hut. My Angie nudges my map to one side, then draws a new flat picture with the light. It is a series of boxes, meant, I think, to represent the layout of the underground rooms.

“This is what you can see and access,” she says, then draws a large circle around it. “In this space here where the trees don’t grow, I think there’s more. At the very least, there must be some kind of power supply. A renewable one, because it’s kept the cryostasis pods ticking over for the last twenty years. Do you get hot springs round here?”

The question surprises me. “Yes. We use them for bathing.”

“Geothermal. Heat from the ground converted into power. There must be some kind of apparatus hidden away somewhere that does that converting.”

“I am finding it difficult to understand what you are saying here, linasha,” I admit.

“I know, I’m sorry.” She gives me a sheepish look. “It’s what everyone always says when I start talking work stuff, and you don’t even have the advantage of being human.”

She draws my attention back to the table and her drawing.

“All you really need to know is that there are more rooms underground. Rooms for the power-generating equipment. Big machines that need a lot of space. Some storage tanks, too, at least two of them. So instead of there being soil and space for the trees to grow roots, there’s just more concrete.”

She draws on more boxes, filling the space between the hut and the forest with more rooms. I can see how this would hamper the trees. Trees do not grow where the caves form - the rocks block their roots. It is not so surprising that the Mercenia hut would have the same effect. The substance that the humans used to build it might be unnaturally flat, straight, but in every other sense, rock is the thing it is most similar to.

“So the trees do not grow here because there is no room for them. Because of underground rooms that we cannot see.”

“Exactly.”

I nod, a feeling of satisfaction - of rightness - filling my chest. “It is a pleasingly simple answer. My heartspace likes it.”

“A simple answer is usually the right one, and it’s easy enough to prove. There’s probably a separate access tunnel to the other rooms somewhere. One the engineers would have used to make sure everything kept ticking over. Have you seen anything like this when you’ve been in the forest?”

The hut disappears, replaced by a large doorway cut into the side of a hill. It is clearly come from my Angie’s imagination, the environment not as crisp and sharp as it has always been when we have been in places she or I have actually seen.

“Nothing like that, no,” I say. “And we have explored the surrounding area thoroughly.”

She nods, not looking at all deterred. “Nineteen years, and in a place with so much rain - a small landslide could have covered it up. Trees grown over the top of it. I’ll see if I can find some blueprints of the base on Farrow’s computer. That would confirm what I’m saying. But if I had to bet my life on it, I’d be feeling pretty confident right now.”

“If only the answers to the blight were so simple.”

I glance at my Angie, expecting consternation, frustration to be shaping her expression. Instead, she has a thoughtful look on her face.

“You know, maybe they are.” She waves a hand over the table, bringing my map back into view. “Ignoring Jaskry’s path for now, this only makes sense as a spread for a disease if the disease started somewhere really near the base.”

I grimace. “It is like with your problem. A thing that cannot be true has to be true. You have said, and the other females have said, that the hut cannot cause a blight. And yet, everything points to the blight originating here. The shape of the spread, the fact that the trees are sickest close to the hut.”

“The only simple answer is that the base is somehow responsible.”

I nod, unease stirring in my heartspace. “If you think the hut is dangerous, then we must let the others know immediately. Little Marsal only has a few seasons of the moon. If she is at risk…”

My Angie shakes her head. “I don’t think she is. It wouldn’t make any sense, would it? To have people living here, working here, if the environment was dangerous to them.”

I wish to argue that Mercenia did not care even a little about her, that they abandoned her here to perish in a cold pod. But Mercenia did care about what they were doing here enough to go to the lengths of travelling across the stars, building themselves a hut in a forest they were not best equipped to survive in. I understand from my sisters that none of this would have been easy for Mercenia. It would be strange to go to so much trouble only to create an environment that caused harm to the people they put here.

“Okay,” I say, relief lifting my heartspace. “But it is still dangerous to the trees?”

“Only over a long period of time. So I don’t think harming the trees was the point. I think it was a side effect.” The fire in her spirit sparks, that beautiful light coming into her eyes. “The wildlife here is pretty dangerous, right? Show me one of your predators.”

I oblige, summoning a merka beast into the clearing with us. The creature stalks out of the trees, lashes flicking about its face, fangs bared as it snarls at us. It is not one of the skinny creatures that attacked the females on the beach, but a well fed, well grown thing. Thick haunches ripple and bunch beneath its skin as it paces back and forth before us, all that power in its legs for pouncing on unsuspecting prey. Big feet, toes tipped with long, sharp claws, move almost silently over the ground. Out here, exposed, it is obvious, but the markings on its fur make it blend into the dappled shadows of the forest. If you do not stay mindful and alert, it would be easy for one to mortally wound you before you even knew it was there.

The one before us now might not even need the benefit of stealth. It is as fearsome a merka beast as I have even seen.

Though she must know it cannot hurt her, my Angie gasps and steps closer to me.

“You’ve got those living in the forest?” Her voice squeaks out of her.

“Do not let it frighten you unduly,” I say. “Merka beasts are dangerous, yes, but easy enough to contend with if you are careful. They have hunting territories that we avoid where we can. And they are unlikely to attack even a lone raskarran unless they are desperate for a meal. They know the places where raskarran hunters and warriors often tread - they detect our scents and avoid us just as we avoid them.”

“Good to know,” my Angie says, her voice still some distance from relaxed.

I cannot resist putting an arm around her, drawing her to my side. Leaning close to her and whispering teasing words into her ear.

“You do not need to fear. Not when you have a master hunter to protect you.”

“The only thing I know for certain you have mastery of is blowing your own fucking trumpet.”

It takes a moment for the dreamspace to make her words make sense to me, but when it does, I laugh.

“And as you get to know me better, linasha, you will learn that I have never lied to you.”

I speak the words close to her neck. A shiver prickles over her skin at the touch of my voice against it. My sensitive, responsive linasha. I am going to show her such great pleasures when she is ready.

The merka beast continues to pace, indifferent to our exchange.

“Okay, get rid of it before I decide to never leave the base,” my Angie says, waving a hand in the merka beast’s direction as if she could shoo it away.

I will it away, feeling my Angie’s body relax in my arms as the creature vanishes.

“Good job the dreamspace means I can’t have nightmares anymore,” she says, shuddering. Then she steps out of my arms, all seriousness and focus once more. “That thing was quiet. Powerful. It might not want to tangle with a raskarran, but a human? We’d be easy pickings for it.”

“Humans have weapons far superior to raskarran spears and bows.”

“Weapons are only any good if you get a chance to use them. And they had a basic medical facility here, not a field hospital. If someone survived an attack, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have survived their injuries. It’s not like they could easily replace staff. Better if they could avoid the creatures, like you do.”

“I am struggling to see what this has to do with the blight.”

The fire in her eyes blazes. “Because there’s no shot Mercenia learned the merka beast territories. Too dangerous, too time consuming. They’d do what they always do - take the easiest path. A chemical deterrent. A substance they’d spray around the area. Something that would keep the creatures away from the immediate area of the base, at least. That way, they wouldn’t have to constantly be on high alert for big cat attacks.”

“A substance that might cause irritation to the skin,” I say, the pieces connecting in my headspace at last. “You think the trees are being poisoned.”