Alyssa Redd's Arc

Chapter 11 of 15

They ran out of the bunker into thin gray light. Marla carried the brass cylinder. Alyssa carried the drive. The Bureau ship's engines pushed a low pressure into the air behind them, still miles off but closing. Alyssa's plan ended at the door. She had proof, a fiancée, and a planet she did not know how to stand on. She needed a person. Someone here. Someone who would open a door for a stranger before the ship landed. Marla stopped at a fork in the path. "Which way." "Up," Alyssa said. "Higher ground. The old man said people used to live on the ridges." They climbed until the trees closed over the sky. Alyssa's crocs slipped on wet leaves. Her workshop eye kept running, uninvited. She saw how the slope would fail in heavy rain. She saw where a snare would sit. It was the first time the skill had told her anything she could use. Half a mile up they found a shelter built into the hillside. Layered slate slabs. Dark seams. A low tunnel mouth cut into the rock. Smoke came out of a vent thin as a finger. Someone lived here. A woman stepped out from behind the shelter with a knife held low. Brown braids. A jacket worn soft at the elbows. She looked at Alyssa's red hair, the tattoo, the crocs, and did not lower the knife. "You're not from here," the woman said. "No." "I heard the engines." She tilted her head at the sky. "They yours?" "They're after me." The woman waited. Marla stepped up beside Alyssa and did not speak. "My grandmother was born on this planet," Alyssa said. "I don't know where. I need a roof for one night. I can trade for it." "What's the trade." "I can look at anything you use and tell you how it will break." The woman's mouth moved, almost a smile. "Prove it." Alyssa pointed at the vent. "Your flue's pitched wrong. One hard wind from the north and it back-drafts. You've been sleeping with a headache." The woman lowered the knife an inch. "Two weeks." "I'm Alyssa. This is Marla." "Alanna Moss." She looked past them, down the slope, at the sound of the ship. "You bring that here, you cost me the ridge." "I know." Alanna weighed it. She looked at Marla's hand on the cylinder, at Alyssa's face, at the tattoo under her eye. "One night. You fix the flue. You leave at first light and you don't tell anyone my name." "Yes." Alanna stepped aside from the tunnel mouth. Alyssa ducked under the slate. The air inside was warm and smelled like roots. She had a foothold. She also had a stranger who could hear the ship as clearly as she could, and a deadline of dawn. Marla set the cylinder down on the packed floor. Outside, the engines got louder.