Twenty people, several wearing marine uniforms, stood around the wispy-haired fellow, who hunkered over a bowl of water. A clairvoyant, she realized when she spotted images of Bocrest’s men moving on the still surface.
“ How’d they get across?” someone asked.
“ Built a catapult.”
A marine whistled.
“ I wouldn’t have joined this team if I’d known we’d be against Admiral Starcrest,” a woman muttered.
“ Isn’t he dead?”
“ We’ll be dead if we tangle with him.”
“ He’s just a man,” Lancecrest growled. “We’ve laid your wizard traps, and we know the terrain best. The advantage is ours.”
Tikaya edged closer to the bowl, hoping to catch sight of Rias. She wished she could communicate with him somehow, let him know everything that mattered. For the moment, the clairvoyant showed them Bocrest and Ottotark as they removed their parachutes and gathered their gear.
“ Find Starcrest,” Lancecrest said. “Let’s see what they’re planning.”
The image shifted, focusing on Rias and Sicarius. Tikaya wrestled with the urge to kick the water bowl over. Even if she did want to see Rias, it was better if Lancecrest did not know what he planned. She took a step toward the bowl. Lancecrest gripped her forearm to keep her back.
“ How was the ride?” Rias asked.
“ Exhilarating,” Sicarius said in a monotone.
“ I thought we might get a yell of excitement or at least a smile out of you, but I see the emperor has trained you well.”
“ Yes.”
It was like conversing with a rock. Tikaya wondered why Rias bothered, especially when he ought to be worried about her. Not that she wanted him to fall apart, but a little agitation would have been flattering.
“ Scouts will go ahead,” Bocrest said, somewhere beyond the edges of the vision. “See what we’re up against.”
Rias took a step.
“ Not you, Admiral. We need you back here planning brilliance, not wandering around looking for your misappropriated camp follower.”
Rias’s jaw clenched and the tendons sprang out on his neck. There was her agitation. And then some. He looked like he might tear Bocrest’s head off.
Sicarius stopped whatever might have come next in the conversation, raising his hand and saying, “Hold.”
He tilted his head, as if listening to something, but his cool eyes stared straight through the water. The clairvoyant flinched, and the image evaporated.
“ What is it?” Lancecrest asked.
“ That young one has unexpected perception for a Turgonian.”
“ He knows we’re watching? So, what? Get them back. I want you on their every step, so we know when they’re coming.”
The clairvoyant closed his eyes and draped his arms across his knees, palms up. Nothing happened. “I can’t. He’s blocking us somehow.”
Lancecrest’s fists clenched and unclenched. “Who is that boy?” he asked Tikaya. “He’s not in uniform, and he’s too young to be giving orders.”
She shrugged. “The marines didn’t tell me much.”
Lancecrest considered her, and she thought he might call Gali over, but the marines and relic raiders were watching him, and he turned to them instead.
“ Time to get ready for company, people. Morrofat, take your squad out. Your job is to delay that team.” Lancecrest dug in a rucksack and pulled out a clunky pair of goggles that reminded Tikaya of the eye protection she had worn on the tundra. He tossed them to her. “You know what your job is. We’ve found dangerous relics that we can throw at Starcrest. If you care about him, you’d best get me those weapons before he gets within range.”
CHAPTER 20
Tikaya stood near the spot where the bat had been disintegrated. From there, the door to the weapons chamber was visible, and the runes glowed beside it. No ropes bound her hands-Lancecrest had decided she needed them for writing-but she had a guard. Gali. The woman huffed and sighed as she paced about, fiddling with a pistol. Her telepathy worried Tikaya more than the weapon. She wanted to copy the cube schematic on the chance Rias could do something with it. And she could escape the raiders long enough to meet up with him.
“ You’re not looking at them,” Gali snapped. “I imagine that’ll make the translation difficult.”
“ I’m ruminating,” Tikaya said.
“ On how to escape, I know.” Gali slapped the pistol across her palm. “Ruminate on getting through that door.”
Tikaya held the goggles before her spectacles and peered through the magnifying lenses. The symbols grew crisper, the nuances easier to make out. They were numbers. Four rows of four, each different. She only recognized a few, but she could look up the others with the sphere if she could find a private place to take it out.
She pushed the tool from her mind. Better these people did not know about it.
With the enhanced vision, she examined the rest of the weapons chamber. A cuboid contraption hung from a ceiling and was attached to a large pipe disappearing into the cavern depths far above. Some kind of fan or ventilation system to suck away fumes if there was a break or accident? Probably not fast enough to save the life of the person inside, but if the door shut and that fan activated perhaps destroying the weapons would not prove deadly for everyone down here.
“ What does one do with the symbols?” Tikaya asked. “Push them?”
“ I wasn’t there,” Gali said, “but I heard Atner stood down here and moved them around with telekinetics.”
Gali stretched a hand toward the butte. One of the numbers indented and glowed red. She twitched her fingers, and it slid one place to the right. The number on the right edge disappeared and reappeared on the left.
“ How’d you do that?” Tikaya asked.
“ A bit of sideways pressure. The runes glide around naturally, as if they’ve been greased. Atner fiddled around for days and finally got lucky. But he only got in once and the symbols changed after that.”
“ But he got a rocket out. How was he able to get it down without the web destroying it in midair?”
Gali shrugged. “The web didn’t attack it.”
“ So, the defense system won’t attack what it’s supposed to defend?” Tikaya wondered if there was anything else it would not attack.
The symbol winked off, though it did not return to its original slot. Three red beams lanced out of the clear door. Tikaya jumped, nearly dropping the goggles. The beams scoured the air in front of the door. After a moment, they cut off.
“ I guess if you don’t punch in the correct code while you’re standing up there, you get incinerated.” She chewed on the side of her mouth. “Your telekinesis does offer a workaround the original builders probably didn’t consider. If they were here as long ago as I suspect, humans wouldn’t have had the skill yet. Relatively speaking, our command of the mental sciences is a recent development in civilization. It’s not something that started appearing until after we developed agriculture and became more agrarian rather than hunter-gatherer. More free time, creation of a leisure class, and-”
“ We didn’t bring you here for a lecture,” Gali snapped. “Figure out how to get in before your cursed Turgonian lover gets her.”
Tikaya turned her attention back to the numbers. The ones she recognized were prime: three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen. Could the whole series just be the first sixteen primes? She had not learned numbers beyond twenty yet, so she would have to look them up. Presumably, the sixteen digits had to be arranged in a specific order to open the door. If Atner Lancecrest had pushed them randomly, he truly had gotten ‘lucky.’ Rias could no doubt give her the exact odds of guessing correctly, but what she remembered of studying permutations in school suggested a ridiculously high number of combinations.
She did not have time for guessing. If the code changed regularly, it was probably a puzzle of some sort. If one knew the goal, one had a better chance of solving it. Could it be as simple as placing them in order? No, too obvious to someone who spoke the language, and the scientists who had built this place had surely had their own people in mind as potential trespassers, not the cave-dwelling humans who had occupied the world at the time.