Challenged (Mates for the Raskarrans #8)

Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Angie

I t’s the tanks that give me the idea.

Low level warning: Tank B.

That’s what the error message on Farrow’s computer said. Whatever the tank was storing, it’s almost run out. Maybe even has run out by now, the error messages weren’t dated. Because the casing has cracked and the substance has leaked out into the soil? Or because it has been sprayed around the forest by some automated system every so often for the last twenty years?

“It’s not blight,” I say, feeling more sure about it the more I talk. “The trees are dying from exposure to a chemical. One that probably wouldn’t kill them in small doses, but has been building up in the soil for years. Spreading over a wider and wider area thanks to the rain. That’s why it’s worse near the base - because that’s the source of it. The further out you go, the more dilute, the less impactive it gets. It makes sense. It’s…”

“Simple,” Rardek says. “Except that there have been no humans here to do the spreading.”

“No need. There will be an irrigation system. A series of pipes under the ground that the chemical would have been distributed by. It probably runs on a timer. A quick spray every few weeks to keep the monsters at bay.”

Rardek’s expression remains grim.

“This is good news,” I tell him. “It’s poison, not disease. No need to map it, no need to do any sort of burn to contain it. We stop the poison at the source and things will resolve themselves over time. There’s probably no saving the trees nearest the base, but the ones further out will recover. And the rain will gradually spread the poison in the ground so far that there isn’t enough of it in any one place to cause any issues.”

His expression doesn’t shift. When he responds, it’s with heavy reluctance.

“I like this idea, my Angie. More than anything, I would like to tell Gregar that a burn is no longer necessary. But there is a problem with this theory. Three seasons ago, a tribe moved into this base. A bad tribe. Raskarrans are usually good natured, but the sickness took away our chance for a future. Living without any hope - it is a terrible thing. It twisted some of our heartspaces, turned some of my brothers from Lina’s path. Basran, the chief of the tribe that lived here, was cruel, lazy, selfish and many more things besides. But I do not doubt he wished to live. The males who did not - they returned themselves to Lina’s embrace many seasons ago. So the trees could not have been sick, dying, three seasons ago. The creatures could not have left the area. Basran would not have moved his tribe here if there was nothing for them to hunt.”

He braces himself for my disappointment, but instead I grin. He arches his brows at me, just a hint of a smile curling upward at the corners of his lips.

“That’s not a problem,” I say. “It actually makes the theory even better.”

“Oh?” The smile broadens. He can’t see the reason yet, but he trusts in my confidence. It’s a heady feeling.

“Yeah, because it takes away the one problem I have with it - the fact that everything took so bloody long. Twenty years is still a really, really long time to kill a tree, even with accidental poison. But three years…”

“Basran would not have known how to use human machines.”

“He wouldn’t have had to. He wouldn’t have had to do anything. The base was probably on some sort of power conservation protocol - only the most vital systems running. Enough power trickling in to keep the cryostasis pods going, the freezers, to keep Farrow’s computer monitoring everything. It would have shut down everything else. Lights, air conditioning, the rest of the lab equipment. And the irrigation system distributing a chemical deterrent. No point keeping the wildlife away from an empty base, right? But then Basran and his tribe arrive and start moving around inside the base. Triggering all sorts of sensors. The base would have started powering back up, turning on a few more things. The stuff that would keep the newly returned humans safe while they got the place fixed up and back to fully operational.”

Rardek starts nodding part way through my explanation. By the end of it, he no longer looks grim. I doubt he fully understood everything I was saying, but apparently he understood enough.

“So the hut thinks that Basran is a human who needs protecting, and starts spreading the poison when he arrives?”

“And over the next three years, the level of poison slowly builds up in the ground, spreading out through the forest.”

The rightness of what I’m saying fills my chest. It all makes too much sense to not be true. Rardek clearly feels the same way - the grin he gives me now is blinding.

“You can confirm this? As with the underground rooms?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Easily. Because we know exactly where to look for proof.”

I quickly pull on my old clothes when I wake. If I’m going to be mucking around with chemicals, I’d rather do it in the heavy trousers and scratchy t-shirt, not the lovely raskarran things I’ve been given. I head downstairs, intending to go straight outside, when a thought occurs to me.

PPE. I just happen to know where Mercenia has stashed some.

I go down into the basement and the storage room. It’s already been quite thoroughly ransacked by the girls - for clothes and shoes, but maybe some other useful things. I know there are some tools. Spades, saws - even some machetes. Useful for traversing wild forests.

I root through the boxes until I discover the hazmat suits. They’re way overkill for a chemical that isn’t lethally toxic to people, but also, why suffer awful skin irritation if I don’t have to? I pull one on, probably not following any sort of proper protocol, but it just needs to keep the gunk off my skin. I don’t need to be hermetically sealed in for that.

I complete the ridiculous picture with a small pickaxe, then head up the stairs and out into the ground floor corridor.

The blood is still spattered across the wall - not a figment of my overworked imagination. I think about what Rardek said about Basran and his tribe. Turned from Lina’s path. I get the feeling they met a bad end here. The kind of end they deserved.

Emerging from the hut, I blink against the sun, my eyes grown used to the dim emergency lighting. It’s early, the sun not even all the way risen, but it’s bright, and I’m forced to pause a moment, shield my eyes against it. When they’ve adjusted, I lower my hand, take a good look at the area around me.

It’s much as it appeared in the dreamspace. A clearing around the base, surrounded by dark, imposing trees. It feels familiar, and yet, seeing it in the real world is somehow so much more than in the dreamspace. The wildness of the forest hits me like a punch in the gut.

I’m not built for this place. So not built for this place.

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

I know he was only teasing, but Rardek’s words are a comfort all the same. It’s nice to have some warm, teasing words echoing round in my head instead of Baxter’s angry voice.

Gripping my pickaxe a little too tight, I take my first steps outside. There’s a fire burning near the edge of the forest, several raskarrans and humans gathered around it already. I aim for it, ignoring the bemused stares at my choice of outfit, focusing only on a familiar form amongst the big, green bodies.

As if he senses me coming, Rardek rises from where he was bent over a pack, stretching to his full, impressive height. His eyes lock on me, and sure, there’s a slight twitch in the corner of his lips, but it’s overpowered by the heat in his eyes. Heat enough to burn the hazmat suit right off.

“You ready?” I say to him.

Liv’s expression is carefully bland as she steps up beside him. “Rardek tells me you found proof that the people here left because of the sickness.”

“Yeah, I did. And I’m about to prove that the trees here are dying because Mercenia accidentally poisoned them. If you want to come along.”

Rardek leads the way, his long stride forcing me to take three quick steps to each of his. Liv is not in such a hurry, trailing behind. Another raskarran comes up beside her, smiling as he falls into step with her much slower pace. Fortunately for her, we don’t go far. It only takes a few minutes to arrive at the tree.

Rardek guides me to the place where his buddy put a foot through the badly rotten roots. Badly rotten, I suspect, because they’ve grown up around one of the sprinklers that was installed to spread the chemical around. The stink of the gunk is even more potent in the real world, especially contrasted against the otherwise sweet, fresh smell of the air.

No taint of smoke and pollution. Just greenery and freshness. It’s… nice. I could get used to it.

But not the rotten stink. I pull the hazmat suit’s mask over my face just to shield my nose from it.

“Is this stuff dangerous?” Liv calls. She’s standing a decent distance back.

“Not from over there. Probably not from here, either. I just don’t want to get it on me.”

I reach a hand towards the roots, intending to have a grope around and see what I can feel, but Rardek’s hand shoots out. Closes around my wrist. I look at him, trying to convey with my eyes that it’s fine.

“Can you tell him the suit will protect me from the chemicals?” I call back to Liv.

“A bit beyond my language skills. Uh, Rardek. Infran. Angie infran.”

Whatever she said, it does the trick. Rardek’s fingers uncurl, releasing me. I shoo him back and he goes, taking two large steps away from me. I scowl at him, shoo him again. He smirks and takes another two steps. It’s probably enough.

A quick rummage around the hole Anghar’s foot made doesn’t reveal any pipework, so I grab my pickaxe, using the pointed end of it to scrape through more roots, digging deeper into the ground. It’s not more than a minute before I feel the end scrape against something hard. I reach back into the hole, scooping the roots I’ve just mulched up aside until I can see the pipe.

“Bingo,” I say, then call back to the others. “This is the bit that could get messy.”

I push the tip of the pickaxe into the ground next to the pipe, sliding it underneath. Then, with all my weight, I pull on the handle. For a moment, nothing happens, until, abruptly, the pipe shifts. The ground rips, more roots breaking apart as the pipe bends and lifts. I stagger back, unbalanced by the sudden movement. The uneven ground beneath my feet doesn’t help, and I fall, landing hard on my butt. But the indignity can’t touch my triumph.

Because there, jutting out from the pipe, is a sprinkler. Just as I expected there would be.

I crawl over to it, inspecting it. The sprinkler is blocked with a buildup of mud and gunk, but it only takes a bit of scraping with my fingers to fully reveal its shape. As I’m doing it, I see that bending the pipe has cracked it. The fact that there isn’t liquid spraying out of it confirms something I’ve suspected all along.

Low level warning: Tank B.

The chemical has been used up. Mercenia almost certainly planned to be here for longer than the eighteen months they got, but more than five years without a resupply? I didn’t think it was likely.

I shake the mud and goo off my hands as best I can, then pull the hood from my head, lowering the mask carefully without touching my face.

“It’s fine. You can come over. Just watch your feet.”

The other raskarran helps Liv over to me, holding her arm the entire way so she can’t trip and fall over the roots. I wonder if this is her mate, but there’s no intimacy to the way he holds her, so I assume he’s not. Watching the level of care this guy provides her, simply because she’s pregnant, maybe a little because she’s in charge - it makes my chest ache.

Be glad, then, that you are stuck here. Because you could never be worthless to me.

A shiver prickles over my skin that has nothing to do with the goo dripping from the ends of my gloves.

“It’s not blight, it’s poison,” I say. “And it can’t spread any more than it already has because the poison is all used up. The tank’s empty.”

Movement at the edge of my vision catches my attention. More raskarrans, more humans coming to have a look at what we’re doing. Liv turns to them, gesturing Sally over. Sally hands Marsal to one of the other raskarrans, then picks her way towards us.

“You’re saying they don’t need to do this burn they’ve been planning?” Liv says. “If it’s not a disease, it can’t be necessary.”

“No, a burn won’t do anything except waste a lot of time and energy.”

“Well, that’s good news,” Liv says. She blows out a relieved sigh, but changes her mind partway through, shooting me a worried look. “Is it? This is good news, right?”

I nod. “There’s no more chemical available to spread. Over time, the level of contamination in the area will reduce. The rain will continue to dilute it, spread it out over a wider area. And eventually, it will break down. The forest must have recovered between Mercenia leaving and Basran’s tribe moving in. That would have been fifteen years or so, right?”

“Something like that,” Liv says.

“The chemical has been spread for twice as long this time round, but even if that means it takes twice as long for the forest to recover, that’s thirty years. That’s still in our lifetime.”

Sally says something in the rumbling raskarran language. Sounds of relief from the raskarrans follows. But then Rardek says something, his tone concerned.

“Rardek says what does all this mean for the path that Jaskry followed?” Sally says. “Jaskry didn’t reach the end of the rot on the path he was following yesterday,” she explains to Liv.

I’ve already been thinking about this, and there’s only one logical answer.

“I think there must be something at the end of it. Another building, another place the team here was using. A place they’d need to be able to get to without fear of running into any monster cats. Maybe a launch pad? I don’t know. But it will be easy enough to find out.”

“We need to do that,” Liv says, nodding. “I don’t want any unanswered questions.”

I think of all the ones I’ve still got rattling around my head. Maybe they play on Liv’s mind more than she first let on.

Liv looks round at the people nearby. One of them is Brooks and she turns to her.

“Have you got any ideas about what might be out there?”

Brooks shrugs. “All my patrols were in the immediate area of the base. I doubt it’s a launch pad, though. The shuttle landed right in this clearing when I came. Communications array, maybe. They work better on higher ground. We often set them up a little way from our main base of operations on missions.”

“It’s high ground here,” I say.

She shrugs. “But there are no satellites here.”

“I would know that if I’d been outside before now,” I say, prompting her to grin.

Liv nods, her lips, previously pressed together in thought, releasing.

“Rardek,” she says. “Will you go to the end of the path Jaskry followed? Find out what’s out there.” As she speaks, Sally translates. “Take Maldek with you. Between the two of you and Angie and Brooks, we should be able to figure it out.”

She looks to me and Brooks for confirmation. We both nod.

“Okay. Leave as soon as you can,” Liv says to Rardek. “I want everyone back here and ready to leave by the time all the women are woken up. Let’s all walk away from this place for the last time together, okay?”

There’s a chorus of agreement. A raskarran steps up beside Brooks, his arms going round her, his lips touching lightly to her forehead. The way Brooks’ smile changes when he does this - it makes her glow.

I feel rather than see my own raskarran stepping up beside me. He doesn’t touch me. Probably wise - I’m still covered in goo.

Liv takes the other raskarran’s hand again, allows him to lead her over the jumble of roots and to the more even ground.

“Maha shun, Anghar,” she says, gripping his arm briefly before letting go. He presses a fist to his heart, then slips away through the trees.

“Won’t let you do a damn thing for yourself the moment they know you’re pregnant,” Liv says, though her tone is warm, amused.

“It’s kind of cute,” I say.

“Very cute. Very annoying at times. But very cute. They’re good people, Angie. I hope you’re starting to see that. I hope Rardek is helping you to see that.”

Of course, my mind instantly goes back to every naughty, teasing thing Rardek has ever said.

“I don’t think you realise what a handful he is.”

Liv snorts. “No, I have a pretty good idea.” Then she looks at me, her smile as warm as I’ve ever seen it. “You’ve done good work here, figuring out this blight. Thank you.”

Words I’ve wanted to hear my entire professional life. I’m embarrassed to feel tears pricking in the corners of my eyes.