Chapter Six
“We’ve been sitting here for three hours,” Morrigan complained.
They had arranged to meet up with Thane, a member of the portal guardians. He was a fae like Morrigan, but a different race and with different features. Cousins, so to speak. They’d agreed to meet on an out-of-the-way forest covered moon.
Their ship had landed a while ago, and now they waited and waited for Thane to emerge from the forest. The fae had always resisted the Abnobians, and so they’d been hunted to near extinction.
Morrigan paced up and down the ship, and then Jhosa said, “He’s here.”
She hurried out the door and was closely followed by Margot and Jhosa.
Thane stood tall, regal, and strong. His dark brown skin was in contrast to his green clothes. The only way he revealed that he was a fae was his pointed ears.
His deep voice rumbled, “Jhosa, Margot, who is this?”
“Morrigan, a fellow fae,” Margot said.
He walked right up to her and looked deeply into her eyes. “The only Morrigan I know is heir to her mother’s throne, on their own world. They are called the tricksters.”
“Yes, I am.”
“That’s right.” Morrigan stood to her full height. Being her mother’s heir was something she didn’t like to think about. They didn’t have the best of relationships, and now she had helped banish her brother to the void.
Her mother was one of the reasons she had stayed on Earth for so long.
Thane said, “Pity we didn’t have more help from your people when the Abnobian bastards decimated us.”
Morrigan didn’t want to get involved in that kind of argument, but she was sure her mother had her reasons. They didn’t get on, but she wasn’t a bad person and would always be open to helping against the Abnobians.
“I don’t know anything about that. I’ve not been home in a long, long time.”
He said nothing and moved over to clasp Jhosa’s hand and then Margot’s.
“Let’s get going,” Margot said.
When they were all strapped in and Jhosa was taking off, Margot said, “Morrigan came back from a planet called Earth to try to find someone.”
“A debt of honour, you might say,” Morrigan said.
“Your people have honour? The people that deceive others by their appearance?”
“Look, I don’t know what happened back home, but I was with a group of friends and trying to protect their planet against the darkness of my brother. While this fight was going on, a wolf, one of the group, was sent through a portal. I promised I would try to find her.”
Margot, trying to calm things down said, “Thane, Vorka’s compound on Danus was attacked by bounty hunters searching for the Map Keeper.”
“Did Camber get away? How is Vorka?” Thane said with worry.
“Vorka is fine. Camber ran, but we got word she was with a foreign wolf. We put two and two together—”
“And thought the wolf might be the one Morrigan was looking for,” Thane said. “It might make Camber easier to get intel on if a lone wolf is travelling with her.”
Morrigan was getting frustrated. “Enough of the background. Let’s get going.”
“They were seen on Oipra,” Margot said.
Thane’s eyes went wide. “Why did they go to a heavily guarded Abnobian mining world?”
“My sense is that they were running and ended up there,” Margot said.
“Can this wolf be trusted? Lone wolves are notoriously—”
Thane was cut off by Morrigan. “Yes, she can be trusted. She’s a member of a proud wolf pack on the planet Earth, and she was willing to give up her life to save that planet.”
“Let’s go, then, and get our Map Keeper back,” Jhosa said.
“Is there a portal to take us there?” Morrigan asked.
Margot sighed. “I believe Camber knows one, but it’s not one of the well known ones. Vorka has Camber keep those locations a secret, so the information can’t be extracted from us.”
“You mean tortured out of us.”
“Something like that,” Margot said.
“So what shall we do? We can’t land on Oipra,” Thane said.
Jhosa turned in his seat. “Why don’t we get close enough so we can scan the planet and pick up their comms. There should be a lot of chatter if the Map Keeper is travelling with a wolf.”
“Good idea,” Margot said.
Jhosa input the directions. “Let’s go.”
“You ready?” Camber said.
They were crouched down at their makeshift camp and ready to move out of their comfortable dome. Camber shut off the heater, and they were exposed to the cold night air.
Brogan shivered.
Camber had to admit, it was quite sweet seeing the big wolf affected by cold. “You’ll warm up soon, Wolf.”
Brogan flashed her a smile and said, “Don’t worry about me, Map Keeper.”
She winked straight after, and Camber’s stomach flip-flopped. Stop that, Camber told her body.
Concentrate. That’s what she needed to do.
She put her satchel across her body, and they moved off. Below them was the door. They followed the line of the rocks until they came to a drop.
“The camouflaged door is down there. It’s too big a jump for me—”
Camber never got to finish her sentence. She was grasped around the waist by Brogan’s two cuffed hands, and Camber raised her arms around Brogan’s neck.
Their eyes were fixed together for seconds, until Camber remembered who she was with and where they were.
“Put me down. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Helping you down,” Brogan said.
“Well, don’t do that again. You are following me, not the other way around, and remember you have cuffs on. They are there for a reason—to keep me safe.”
“How can I forget,” Brogan said angrily.
“Right, the door is here.”
Brogan looked at the rock wall. “Where?”
Camber put her hand through the rock face and demonstrated the illusion. “Just like the large door at the Temple. The Abnobians use programmable matter to create illusions, the appearance of magic.”
“What is programmable matter?” Brogan asked.
Camber opened her mouth to explain but thought the better of it. “It’s too much to explain just now. Just accept that what you see exists.”
“Another time, then, when we’re not running for our lives. How do we get in?”
Camber took a breath. Since she had agreed to help Brogan, against her better judgement, Camber had been going from task to task.
But taking this unknown wolf into the depth of Abnobian territory, behind the line, was giving her pause for thought.
All Brogan would have to do was step out into the open, and the Drazani guards would have the Map Keeper.
Camber felt she was a good judge of character, but her enemies had tried to do similar things before.
“Before we do this, I’m placing trust in you. If you have any ideas of handing me over to the Abnobians, just tell me now, and get it over with.”
“Down,” Brogan said. Then she pointed. “In the bushes there.”
“Why?” Camber asked.
Brogan shoved her over to the bushes, then pushed her down so they were both covered. She placed her finger to her lips, and then to her ears.
It took a minute, but a group of Drazani guard came marching past. Once they were gone, Camber opened her mouth to talk, but Brogan put her finger to her lips again while she was listening.
“Okay, it’s safe.”
Camber walked out of the bushes and said, “I’m grateful for your super wolf hearing.”
“Yeah, well, you can trust me. I’m a tracker on my world. Doing that job, your senses are always alert.”
“Let’s get going, then.”
Camber felt guilty for keeping Brogan cuffed. But her brain told her Just be careful.
She led them back to the patch of wall they’d been at. “Now it’s your turn to trust me.”
Brogan didn’t know what to expect, so she was shocked when Camber walked through the wall.
She followed and showed that trust and was faced by a big black door. Camber had already gotten a tool from her satchel to open the door. There was a click, and the door slid open.
“This is a quiet corridor. People only use it to get to power cells, for lights, heat, that kind of thing,” Camber said.
“Sounds like you’ve been here before,” Brogan said.
There was a short silence before Camber said, “Something like that. Follow me.”
Brogan followed down a corridor hewn from the rocky mining base. As she walked further in, she was hit with a chemical scent. She knew it was much stronger to her, given her wolf sense of smell. She coughed. “What is that?”
Camber turned back. “What?”
Brogan held her forearm across her nose. “The smell, it’s chemical and overwhelming.”
“It’ll be coming from the mines.”
Brogan began to cough more, and her eyes streamed.
“Take my hand.”
Brogan allowed herself to be led, and Camber took her through a door and into a storage cupboard.
The door sealed the room off enough that Brogan breathed easier. She bent down and rested her forearms on her thighs. It wasn’t easy with the cuffs on.
Camber rubbed her back. “Take deep breaths. I should have thought before bringing a wolf in here.”
Brogan shivered at the touch of Camber’s hand. She felt warmth from her touch spread into her chest, and her breathing calmed.
“I’m okay. What is that stuff?”
“Ternite. There are only a few planets that have the mineral that we know of. When it’s lasered from the rock, it creates the fumes that you struggled with.
We’re quite far away from the actual mines.
They are deep into the rock. I knew this space was okay for me, but I forgot you and your sense of smell. ”
Brogan rubbed her face with her arm. “How do the miners cope with that environment?”
“Nearly none make it home. The fumes give them lung disease and cut their lifespan in half. But the people are so brainwashed they think that their family member has given up their life to sit beside their gods in the stars.”
“These Abnobians are truly amoral. Surely people must resist them?”
“Yes, me and the portal guardians, a resistance cell working against them. But I can’t say too much more,” Camber said.
“Are they anything to do with the Tuatha De Danann?” Brogan asked.
“What do you know about them?”
“When we were fighting Balor, a monk—a member of Tuatha De Danann—came through the portal to help and talked to me and my friends about Balor.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“Nuada.”
Camber reached into her bag and took out a small black tool. “Give me your arms.”