Zarah Voss's Arc

Chapter 4 of 16

Zarah had the three pearls laid out on her bench when Sylvana came back up the slope, fast. The flowers on her head had folded tight, like fists before rain. Zarah knew that meant trouble before the plant woman spoke. "The shells you opened were not empty," Sylvana said. "Something in the deep watched them. Now the water tastes of the missing pearls. It follows the taste. It comes to shore." Zarah looked at the pearls, then at the flat gray water. "How long?" "Soon. Fast as a tide that skips the moon." Zarah had built a life on not panicking. She turned to her workbench, the sleek one with tools racked along the back. She had come to Sporis for a drive, not a fight. But a drowned engineer builds nothing. She pulled up her lattice sketch and dropped it. Different problem now. She fed raw scrap into the tall replicator and set it working. "I test my gear before I trust it," she told Sylvana. "No time to test this. So I overbuild." The machine hummed and shaped metal. First the armored suit, paneled and hard across the chest. Then the boots, heavy at the sole, spiked at the toe. Then the gloves, fingers bare, backs plated with steel. "You dress for a party," Sylvana said. "I dress so they look at the wrong thing." Zarah pulled the suit on, then the boots, then the gloves. She flexed her fingers. The plating held. "Then I hit them where they don't expect."