Page 34 of Soliv Four
“What about the crystals we smuggled out from the mines,” D’aktan asked.
“They have to be cut and fired. We don’t have the equipment. We will have to find a processed crystal in one of the other crashed ships.”
Emon went through the list and showed them pictures of the parts they needed. Then he brought up a map of downed vessels around their current location.
“Won’t we get lost?” Angie asked. “We can barely see the sun here.”
“There’s no guarantee that we will find these ships, but we will leave a trail as we go, and we can backtrack,” Tomak replied. “I will show you how to do that.”
“Remember,” said Emon. “As J’garin said, we’re not mechanics, so don’t try to salvage any parts yet. This is just recon.”
“Tomak, I might be able to help you with this,” Angie whispered to him. “I never worked on space ships, but I repaired and serviced medical droids and machines back on Earth. That required mechanical skills plus some programming.”
Tomak smiled at her. “We will take you up on that when the time comes. Right now, we’re going to locate the salvage sites.”
With that, the three women got up from the ground and folded the tarp, then went back to join their mates. Angie gave the tarp back to Tomak to put in their provision bag. He tucked it into a separate pocket from the protein energy bars then took out one for each of them to eat along the way.
“How’s your water holding out?” he asked.
“I only used half of it so far.”
“Good. You should have enough until we get back,” he replied and started into the dense jungle, making a path as he went. “Stay close behind me, and watch for slithers. Only some of them are poisonous.”
“Snakes? There are snakes in here. Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I didn’t think of it. But don’t worry, snakes don’t bite unless you get to close or accidentally step on them.”
“There weren’t any in the jungle maze.”
“They have repellant modules in the perimeter. We’re outside that.”
“Of course, we are,” she muttered. “Are they going to send out guards or something out looking for us?”
“They only care if we don’t show up for our matches. Tomorrow is just a training day,” he said, parting vegetation and tramping it down ahead of them.
Progress was slow, with hardly a break in the plant life. Angie wondered how Tomak even knew they were going in the right direction. She appreciated that Tomak was careful not to let branches spring back and slap her in the face as he forged ahead. Glancing behind at the bent and broken foliage behind them, Angie felt confident they could easily find their way back.
Only the point where they entered the jungle back at the maze fence was disguised so anyone looking would not easily find their trail. Plus, the men made some false dead-end paths in case others managed to find their main trail.
It seemed like they were trapping through the jungle for more than an hour, but not quite a span. After being on Soliv for several moon spans, she had worked out the translation of time measurement. A span was close to one hundred minutes. All the time increments were in multiples of ten.
As she was mulling over time, measure and watching the ground for snakes. She walked right into Tomak, who stopped without warning.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” She reached out, resting her hands at his waist to steady herself.
“Looking for snakes?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t see any.”
Tomak kicked at something with his shoe. “I think we found it.” He pulled at some of the vines, slicing through them with his hunting knife. It was a craft that appeared to be older than the space ship they’d found, but it hadn’t fared as well in the crash. “I think this is a drone shuttle used to deliver goods from a space freighter too big to land. Those are shipping crates.”
He pointed at a lumpy pile overgrown by an invasive vine. Cutting through some of the vines, he pushed them away from the boxes to see if they had an inventory printed on them somewhere.
“This one says com tablets. This other one is Shalorian ale. Some of those still in the cargo hold are prison uniforms, shoes… And… Security Guard Uniforms,” he said. “We haven’t tasted anything like Shalorian ale since before our last mission that landed us here.”
“You don’t want to carry that crate out, do you?” she asked.
“There would be no way to hide it if I did.” He was still looking at the different shipping labels. “Oh, excellent! Look at that, a crate of pain sticks stunners. None of this will fix the evac transporter, but there is some useful stuff here.”
