Zarah Voss's Arc

Chapter 12 of 16

Zarah stood at the water's edge and studied the pale worm below. It circled the heap of coiled rods like a guard walking a fence. She needed those rods for her frame. She could not swim down and gather them while that thing watched her. She had fought crabs before. She knew how creatures moved when they meant harm. So she built for war again. Her replicator hummed on the bank, and she pulled out a short spear and a strip of hardened plate for her arm. She strapped a gill root to her throat and tested her breath. The lake was shallow, four feet at most. She could stand in it and fight if she had to. She waded in. The cold reached her waist. The worm turned toward her, and she raised the spear. Its horns curved back from a sleek head. Its body rippled, long and quick. She braced for the strike. It did not come. The worm slid past her leg, close enough to touch, and kept going. It did not snap. It did not coil to strike. It simply swam away toward the reeds, uninterested in her. Zarah lowered the spear. She watched it go and felt foolish. She had armed herself against a creature that wanted nothing from her. All her planning, all her steel, and the thing just wanted to be left alone. She let out a breath and set the spear against a rock. Then she waded to the coils. The bundle sat heavy on the lake bed, rods wound into broad, tight curves. Metal, bright even under the murk. She got her hands under one edge and lifted. It barely moved. The bundle weighed as much as she did. She worked it loose one coil at a time. She wedged the spear under the mass and pried it free of the mud. She dragged each length to the shore and stacked it on the grass. The rods were straight enough once she pulled the curve out. Her press could finish the rest. Her arms burned. Her back ached. She did not stop until the last coil lay dripping in the sun. Zarah sat on the bank beside her pile of rods. She had her frame. She had the spine her pod needed. She ran her hand along one wet rod and tested its give. It held firm. It would hold the plates. It would hold the drive. Then she looked closer at the metal. The surface shimmered with colored bands, layer on layer, the way the worm had laid it down over years. She pressed a thumbnail into it. Soft on the outside, hard at the core. She smiled. This was not steel she knew. She would have to learn how it bent before she trusted it under a firing drive. She gathered the rods and started the long walk back to her workshop.