He heard a shout behind him, and whipped around to make sure Cyra was okay, his bruised ribs protesting. He saw a flash of teeth—she was grinning, calling for one of the others. When he went back to her, he expected to see something shiny, something useful-looking. But it was just more metal. Gray in color. Dull.
“What the—Commander Noavek!” said the soldier who had come to Cyra’s side first, her eyes wide behind her rain-streaked visor. Vakrez jogged over.
“I saw a corner of it peeking out, and dug deeper,” Cyra said excitedly. “It’s a big piece, I think.”
He could tell what she meant—the corner of whatever she had found was thick, and back in the pile of junk were glints of the same shade. It looked like the sheet was as tall as the flagpole had been. He didn’t understand why they were so excited about it.
“Cy—er, Miss Noavek?” he said to her.
“It’s Pitha’s most valuable substance,” she said in response, tugging wet fabric away from the metal. “Agneto. Strong enough to withstand heavy hits from things like asteroids, holds up well when we pass through the currentstream. For the past ten seasons, it’s the only thing we’ve been using to repair the sojourn ship, but it’s a rare find.”
Half the platoon had come running, and now everyone was helping Cyra unearth the sheet, most grinning just like she was. Akos stood back as they dug deeper, finally loosing enough of the sheet to get a good grip. Together they dragged it from the rubble, then carried it back to the transport vessel, which had a hold under it big enough to carry the agneto.
He didn’t know what to make of seeing them all work together, Cyra and Vakrez Noavek right there with common soldiers, like they weren’t royalty. Cyra with that look she sometimes wore when they made iceflower blends together and she got something right at last. A kind of pride, he thought, in doing something useful.
It was a good look for her.
As a kid, he’d dreamt of going off-planet. All the kids in Hessa had, because Hessa kids were mostly too poor to ever leave. The Kereseth family was richer than most in Hessa, but they had nothing compared to farm owners in Shissa or Osoc, up north. Still, his dad had promised him that someday he would take him into space, and they could visit another planet. Akos’s choice.
The water planet hadn’t been his first choice, or even his second. Nobody in Thuvhe knew how to swim, because pretty much all the water they had came in the form of ice. But now he had been to Pitha. He had been in earshot of the pounding waves, had seen the frothy surface from above, had felt his own smallness as he stood on the landing pad with water in every direction, warm rain pounding on his head.
Then almost as soon as he was starting to get used to it, they were gone. He was dripping water on the floor of the floater, holding a vial of rainwater. Cyra had given it to him as they loaded the agneto into the transport—“You may as well have a memento of your first time on another planet,” she’d said with a shrug, like it meant nothing. Only there wasn’t much that meant nothing to Cyra, Akos was finding.
At first he hadn’t seen the point of a memento, because who would he show it to? He wouldn’t be seeing his family again. He was going to die among the Shotet.
But he had to have hope for his brother, at least. Maybe Eijeh could take it back home with him, after Jorek got him out.
Cyra had two fistfuls of old flag in her lap, and though she wasn’t smiling, she had a fierce energy in her face, from finding the agneto.
“I take it you did a good thing,” Akos said, when he was sure Vakrez and Malan weren’t listening.
“Yeah.” She nodded, once. “Yeah, I did.” After a tick, she added, “I guess it was bound to happen eventually. I was due.”
“Your currentshadows aren’t as dark,” he said, leaning his head back. She was quiet then. Staring at the streaks of darkness—now more gray than black—that coursed over her palm, all the way back to the sojourn ship.
They made it back in good time, all of them soaked through. Some of the other ships had come back from the scavenge early, so there were people in wet clothes milling around everywhere, trading stories. Everybody peeled the—supposedly—waterproof suits off their bodies and dumped them in piles to be cleaned.
“So the Shotet just have a bunch of waterproof clothes lying around?” he said to Cyra as they walked back to her quarters.
“We’ve been to Pitha before,” she said. “Every sovereign has researchers who prepare for every planet in advance, but anyone over a certain age knows how to survive in any environment, essentially. Desert, mountain, ocean, marsh . . .”
“Desert,” he said. “I can’t even imagine walking on hot sand.”
“Maybe someday you will,” she said.
His smile fell away. She was right, probably. How many sojourns would he go on before he died for her family? Two, three? Twenty? How many worlds would he walk on?
“That’s not what I . . .” she started. She paused. “Life is long, Akos.”