Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it? -_-;; Lately I've been a little more absorbed with other projects, but I promise you that Linna (Nhadala) and company are all still in good shape and will get their story out. ^_^ Bear with me.
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up
by flame mage
spherechange 6: Chaos Maelstrom
**********
My watch said 6:30 when I rolled off the cot the next morning. Redeci, the artifact lady, was curled on her side two cots over, still bundled up in her shower cap goggles and her bondage parka. I groaned and stumbled outside.
It was still pitch dark outside, but there was a fire already blazing in the center of camp. I made my way over and found that Benzo was the only one up. He was scuttling around on his short legs, stoking the fire and opening packages of canned beans.
"Umm, Benzo?" I asked when I got within earshot. "What are you doing?"
He looked up. "Oh, good morning, Nhadala. It's my job to get meals together for everyone. We don't have all that much, but the freight hover is supposed to bring some things today--I asked for dried fruit and maybe some salted jerky. We've only been here a few days and already everyone's tired of canned beans."
"How is this your job? If you don't have a rotation schedule set up, shouldn't it be Nedus' problem since he's managing the camp?"
Benzo shrugged, deftly twisted the can open with a small knife, and poured its contents out into a large pot. "No one else wants to do it. This keeps things simple. I don't really have much to do during the day anyway. As you said, there's not much of anyone out here to translate to."
The long-suffering and patient cook, rising before the sun for the benefit of others. First Zalitz, now Benzo. As much as I appreciated the concept of the Renaissance man who could cook and was actually willing to, from a personal standpoint I kinda wished these guys would get the tire tracks off their backs and make someone else do something once in a while. I'd learned from two years of captaining a blitz team that anytime you let everyone rely on one person, bad things start to happen. That person becomes a time bomb of pent-up resentment that can explode at any time, and no one else will be expecting it--and in the meantime, they'll all get complacent and lazy. If I was going to be stuck here for how-long-no-one-except-Gippal-(that-bastard)-knew, I was damn well going to make it as easy on myself as humanly possible.
"That does it," I decided, and finished the chore-rotation charts by the time the rest of the crew got up for breakfast.
Over our slightly musty repast of formerly-canned beans eaten straight from the cooking pots (cooking note: this is better than fiend meat but stomach-turningly revolting compared to, say, Mitza's burgers--which is saying something, considering that those things contain more grease than a convention of Yevon clergy), I started planning out the day. "Okay. Everyone sleep well?"
They all nodded groggily through their varying degrees of hangovers and bedhead. I didn't really care whether they'd slept well or not, so I pulled a Shelinda and plowed right through. "That's great. So today: Jock--" cue the smirk; damn it all, why must there always be one smart-aleck in every group? "--as soon as the newbies get here, you're gonna fly 'em out to the Western Expanse and start digging in sector A4." I tapped the corresponding square on the grid with one pudgily-gloved finger. "Redeci and Nedus, as soon as the freight hover gets here and we get the recruits off, you *immediately* go over everything on board and make sure we have everything we need. Ihu, Tuc, Dnac, make sure all the hovers are in good working order, and then I want you three to go with Goma and start scanning the Western Expanse for anything else that looks like it might be important. And Benzo, you and I are going to go have a talk with those locals. Everyone straight on what they're doing for the morning?"
"I have a question!" piped up Dnac, the youngest of the three brothers.
"Shoot."
"When's lunch?"
*****
"So I'm interested to know, Benzo, who are these locals of yours?" I asked as the hover lifted off. Jock had given me a crash course in the basics of flight, looking down his nosestrap at me and insinuating that he'd be there to scrape my sorry ass out of the desert sands with a spatula when I crashed three feet outside of camp. It actually wasn't that complicated; it was one of the first or second wave of machina that the Al Bhed were actually beginning to design and build themselves now that machina--excuuuuuse me, *machine*--research was legal, and as a result it was designed to be pretty user-friendly. I had a sphere-key ignition, joystick for steering, altitude controls, throttle pedal, and windshield wipers, and that was about it. The dimmers on my goggles were turned up to full power, and I could just barely see where I was going over the glare of the desert sands. Benzo had hooked his arms through the seatbelts in the passenger's seat next to me so he could see over the dashboard to tell me where to go.
"You've probably seen them around without realizing it," he smiled. "Their children are usually underfoot. The adults are a lot less skittish on the whole, and once they get to know you, they're very warm--if a little sharp sometimes. I would never have even met them if their leader hadn't extended a personal invitation. We've yet to begin formal diplomatic relations, but I've been dropping by to talk to them a few times in the last few days. Swerve to the left here," he instructed me suddenly. "There. See where we're going?"
I could see a small compound tucked into a crater and filled with green dots. "Those are cacti, Benzo."
"Exactly." He looked pleased. "This is your first look at the Cactuar Nation. You can land in the northeast corner, by that cave."
I struggled to perform a silent touchdown the way Jock had told me I was supposed to and ended up thwumping the hover down on the ground from a height of twenty feet or so, creating a large dust cloud that took several minutes to disperse. When it did, Benzo leapt out of the hover and took off toward the center of the crater. I shrugged and jogged after him.
He stopped just south of the middle in front of a very large cactus that was surrounded by a faintly-glowing green cloud. "This is Marnela," he told me matter-of-factly, like there was nothing out of the ordinary in the fact that he appeared to be introducing me to a large houseplant.
"This is a cactus," I contradicted him.
"This is *Marnela,* the *Cactuar*," he insisted. "Well, properly she is a cactus, but think of her as an adult Cactuar if it helps. And Marnela, this is Nhadala, our forewoman."
I was starting to wonder if maybe the camp interpreter wasn't just a little bit cracked when the cactus started vibrating and squeaking at me. I jumped and fell over. The cactus squeaked even louder and Benzo laughed with it.
"Here," he said. "I'll translate. She's saying, 'Don't worry about it. Most people are surprised when they first see us. I am Marnela, the leader of the Cactuar Nation.'"
I blinked. "Benzo, you brought me all the way out here in the middle of the day when there's work I could be doing so you could pull a ventriloquist act with a plant?"
'Marnela' started squeaking again. "'What do I have to do to prove I'm sentient? Sing the Hymn of the Fayth?'" In tones not that far off from the ones Naaga produces when she's trying to sing two octaves too high for her range, the cactus began squealing out the melody to the Hymn of the Fayth.
This was a little too creepy for my taste. "Okay, okay, okay, so you really are a talking Cactuar. Cactus. Whichever," I said, mainly to make sure it--Benzo--she?--didn't decide to use 1,000 Needles on me to prove that even cacti can get insulted. "Are you the only one?"
Benzo shook his head, but Marnela was already talking. "'Of course not. We all speak the Cactuar language. I just happen to understand yours as well. Actually, I was the one who asked Benzo to come. We of the Cactaur Nation need your help.'" Benzo broke off and looked at Marnela. "Are you sure we should be doing this before we establish formal diplomatic relations? We haven't sent an official ambassador out here or anything."
Marnela started talking, and Benzo listened intently. "What'd she say?" I asked. Was I actually buying this stuff?
"She said that we could do that later; this was more important. Apparently she's felt some kind of large fiend presence in the desert lately. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but...a swarm of something, or maybe...what?" He stopped to listen. "...a big monster? Three heads? It seems kind of farfetched, but these days I suppose anything is possible."
"We can barely handle our own camp, Marnela. How the hell are we supposed to deal with fiend problems too?"
Squeak squeak. "'It doesn't have to be done right away. We have some time left, and when they come I can hold them off for a little while. When my strength fails, the Ten Gatekeepers will be able to protect us for even longer. But sooner or later, something must be done. You must be on guard every minute. This desert holds more power than you know.'"
"I spent two decades of my life at Home," I shot out before I could stop myself. Who knew where 'Nhadala' was supposed to have lived when she was a kid--probably nowhere near where Benzo or any of the others had been. "I know what the Sanubia Desert's like."
The squeaking grew to a fever pitch as the arms of the Cactuar quivered. "'My child,'" Benzo translated, "'you have so much to learn. You claim to know the very nature of the desert sands and yet you did not even know that Cactuars talk.'"
"Hey! Hey, slackers!" came a nasally mechanical voice from the direction of the hover. My head snapped around so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash. It was Picket. "Get back to camp already! There's a problem!"
"What problem?!" I demanded in a yell.
"Just get back!" And the thing shot off.
"Come on, Benzo, we'd better get a move on. Could be serious." I cracked my knuckles. "Bye, Marnela. We'll be back." She squeaked one more time and fell silent. Benzo and I raced back to the hover and took off.
*****
I was on pins and needles for the entire flight back, and I nearly crashed the hover more than once because my hands were so tense that I had to take Rin's two deep breaths and count to ten about five times. Apparently no one was dead or Picket probably would've mentioned it, but anything short of that could've happened. No one said anything and the silence except for the dull whirr of the engine was killing me and when Benzo hit the windshield wiper button by mistake I was so startled our altitude soared fifty feet and then dropped a hundred.
I was on the ground before the engines were even off, looking around for the crisis. Dnac rushed up to me. "Nhadala," he panted, "it's almost noon. The freight hover shoulda been here hours ago, and we haven't seen hide nor hair of it."
Right away I stopped dead, looking for something to throw. Slowly, I turned toward him and stared menacingly at him before I lost it and yelled, "You brought me back here in a blind panic because your damn shipment of canned baked beans hasn't arrived yet?! What are you idiots doing around here, still playing Hearts and getting drunk?! Get back to work and don't waste my time like this!"
No one moved. "Nhadala," Redeci said quietly, "there's a massive sandstorm coming in from the north."
"We think maybe the hover got caught up in it on its way from Djose," Jock explained. "Amateur pilots, y'know, it can get dangerous out there."
Cred. Of course something like this would happen on my first day. I ran a hand through my sandswept hair and tried to decide what I was supposed to do here. "Does anyone have a radio?" I asked meekly after a minute.
"I have the emergency commsphere," Goma answered, running to get it and hand it to me. I took it and flipped it on. The default connection was apparently Djose, so I was dialing within ten seconds and had a tech on the phone in twenty. About ten minutes--of course, like Gippal would rearrange his schedule for anything--after that, I had Mr. Smooth on the line and asked him what the hell had happened to the freight hover.
"Hey, I'm not sure," he said casually, like he was telling me that he wasn't sure whether the Beasts or the Fangs were gonna win the exhibition match on Thursday. "We got a distress call around eight-thirty AM. Since then, nothing. You guys had any problems with sandstorms today?"
I brushed another renegade lock of hair away from my goggles and looked off into the distance. A large spiraling cloud of dust was rising just over the horizon line. "Yeah," I replied.
"That might be your problem. Look, I'm not an expert, but I hear those things move pretty fast. If I were you and you're in the way, I'd get your butts outta whatever expanse you're in right now and head to the safest place you can get."
"But what about our freight hover? We're dead in the water unless we can get some equipment and diggers out here!"
"Those're the breaks, sweetheart. Why don't you cover your ass and then we'll do lunch sometime, okay? Buh-bye."
Oh, no way, it was not possible that he was doing this to me. "Gippal?! GIPPAL?! Get back here!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. But it was hopeless. He was already gone. I tried calling back three times, but the hassled tech informed me with increasing levels of annoyance and then outright hostility that Mr. Gippal had gone out for the day. Thanks for nothing, you jerk.
Redeci was tapping me on the shoulder. "Uhm...Nhadala? What are we going to do?"
I turned to her. "About the freight hover?"
"No." She shook her head and pointed. "About that."
The sandstorm was rising quickly now and getting larger almost before my eyes. "You guys've been here a while," I snapped to the team. "How long do we have before it gets here?"
"Maybe ten minutes," Nedus answered.
I literally felt the blood drain from my face. Tyssed, we were screwed. "All right," I ordered, speaking without any benefit of thought whatsoever, "We don't really have a choice here. Load whatever you can carry onto the hovers within the next fifteen minutes, or we leave it behind. We're relocating to the Western Expanse."
"What do we take?!" Tuc cried desperately. It might have been the first time I actually heard him say something.
"Get the food and blankets first. Equipment shelves and that tent second, one of the living tents and the cots third. We'll grab the second residential tent if we have time. Right now we've just gotta move!"
I darted into the second tent to grab my gear bag and then into the storage tent, where I started cramming every empty compartment in my bag with all the cans it could hold. When it was stuffed, I grabbed two of the plywood boards that were serving as artifact shelves and raced out to the hover I'd used earlier that morning. The cargo space was almost nil, but I managed to fit the boards in the back and dump the bag out on the floor. Cans rolled all over the inside of the hover, but none of them fell out and in either case I was already gone.
The three brothers had the last of the food and the boards inside the second hover when I got back, and Jock and Goma were dismantling the equipment tent. I dashed over to help Redeci and Benzo with the larger living tent. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the storm getting larger and larger as it neared the camp. How much time did we have? I glanced frantically at my watch. Four minutes.
We almost ripped the canvas in our hurry to get the tent down and--the hardest part--load it into the last hover. Hovers are pretty light craft that are supposed to be used for passengers. As a result, their cargo holds are tiny--dammit, that's what freight hovers are for! Why hadn't anyone left us heavier transport in case of an emergency? Gippal must have had even less idea about what we were in for than I had.
"Nhadala, the last tent!" Redeci called over the roar of the wind, which was getting almost deafening now.
"We don't have time!" I yelled back. "Get in the hover and let's get out of here!" I practically launched myself into the pilot's seat of the first hover and she, Goma and Benzo raced in after me. Jock, Nedus, and Dnac had already taken off in the second one, and the other two brothers stuffed themselves and Picket in the third and blasted into the air.
"All right, people, hang onto your goggles!" I shouted against the wind, slamming the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor. We lurched violently.
"Nhadala!" Goma bellowed right into my ear. "Hurry!"
I shot a rapid glance back. We were the last of the three hovers in the air. The sandstorm was right behind us. As I watched, it blazed into the camp. The canvas and poles of the last tent went flying in all directions. One of the poles hit the ground from maybe two hundred feet up and literally bent in half. In a couple seconds, that could be us, except that we'd hit the ground and explode on impact. "Come on, GO!" I cried at the engine. Finally we lurched again and shot forward along the sand. I banged down with one gloved fist on the altitude control until we were up in the air and tore out of the claws of the sandstorm like a One-Eye out of hell.
Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it? -_-;; Lately I've been a little more absorbed with other projects, but I promise you that Linna (Nhadala) and company are all still in good shape and will get their story out. ^_^ Bear with me.
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up
by flame mage
spherechange 6: Chaos Maelstrom
**********
My watch said 6:30 when I rolled off the cot the next morning. Redeci, the artifact lady, was curled on her side two cots over, still bundled up in her shower cap goggles and her bondage parka. I groaned and stumbled outside.
It was still pitch dark outside, but there was a fire already blazing in the center of camp. I made my way over and found that Benzo was the only one up. He was scuttling around on his short legs, stoking the fire and opening packages of canned beans.
"Umm, Benzo?" I asked when I got within earshot. "What are you doing?"
He looked up. "Oh, good morning, Nhadala. It's my job to get meals together for everyone. We don't have all that much, but the freight hover is supposed to bring some things today--I asked for dried fruit and maybe some salted jerky. We've only been here a few days and already everyone's tired of canned beans."
"How is this your job? If you don't have a rotation schedule set up, shouldn't it be Nedus' problem since he's managing the camp?"
Benzo shrugged, deftly twisted the can open with a small knife, and poured its contents out into a large pot. "No one else wants to do it. This keeps things simple. I don't really have much to do during the day anyway. As you said, there's not much of anyone out here to translate to."
The long-suffering and patient cook, rising before the sun for the benefit of others. First Zalitz, now Benzo. As much as I appreciated the concept of the Renaissance man who could cook and was actually willing to, from a personal standpoint I kinda wished these guys would get the tire tracks off their backs and make someone else do something once in a while. I'd learned from two years of captaining a blitz team that anytime you let everyone rely on one person, bad things start to happen. That person becomes a time bomb of pent-up resentment that can explode at any time, and no one else will be expecting it--and in the meantime, they'll all get complacent and lazy. If I was going to be stuck here for how-long-no-one-except-Gippal-(that-bastard)-knew, I was damn well going to make it as easy on myself as humanly possible.
"That does it," I decided, and finished the chore-rotation charts by the time the rest of the crew got up for breakfast.
Over our slightly musty repast of formerly-canned beans eaten straight from the cooking pots (cooking note: this is better than fiend meat but stomach-turningly revolting compared to, say, Mitza's burgers--which is saying something, considering that those things contain more grease than a convention of Yevon clergy), I started planning out the day. "Okay. Everyone sleep well?"
They all nodded groggily through their varying degrees of hangovers and bedhead. I didn't really care whether they'd slept well or not, so I pulled a Shelinda and plowed right through. "That's great. So today: Jock--" cue the smirk; damn it all, why must there always be one smart-aleck in every group? "--as soon as the newbies get here, you're gonna fly 'em out to the Western Expanse and start digging in sector A4." I tapped the corresponding square on the grid with one pudgily-gloved finger. "Redeci and Nedus, as soon as the freight hover gets here and we get the recruits off, you *immediately* go over everything on board and make sure we have everything we need. Ihu, Tuc, Dnac, make sure all the hovers are in good working order, and then I want you three to go with Goma and start scanning the Western Expanse for anything else that looks like it might be important. And Benzo, you and I are going to go have a talk with those locals. Everyone straight on what they're doing for the morning?"
"I have a question!" piped up Dnac, the youngest of the three brothers.
"Shoot."
"When's lunch?"
*****
"So I'm interested to know, Benzo, who are these locals of yours?" I asked as the hover lifted off. Jock had given me a crash course in the basics of flight, looking down his nosestrap at me and insinuating that he'd be there to scrape my sorry ass out of the desert sands with a spatula when I crashed three feet outside of camp. It actually wasn't that complicated; it was one of the first or second wave of machina that the Al Bhed were actually beginning to design and build themselves now that machina--excuuuuuse me, *machine*--research was legal, and as a result it was designed to be pretty user-friendly. I had a sphere-key ignition, joystick for steering, altitude controls, throttle pedal, and windshield wipers, and that was about it. The dimmers on my goggles were turned up to full power, and I could just barely see where I was going over the glare of the desert sands. Benzo had hooked his arms through the seatbelts in the passenger's seat next to me so he could see over the dashboard to tell me where to go.
"You've probably seen them around without realizing it," he smiled. "Their children are usually underfoot. The adults are a lot less skittish on the whole, and once they get to know you, they're very warm--if a little sharp sometimes. I would never have even met them if their leader hadn't extended a personal invitation. We've yet to begin formal diplomatic relations, but I've been dropping by to talk to them a few times in the last few days. Swerve to the left here," he instructed me suddenly. "There. See where we're going?"
I could see a small compound tucked into a crater and filled with green dots. "Those are cacti, Benzo."
"Exactly." He looked pleased. "This is your first look at the Cactuar Nation. You can land in the northeast corner, by that cave."
I struggled to perform a silent touchdown the way Jock had told me I was supposed to and ended up thwumping the hover down on the ground from a height of twenty feet or so, creating a large dust cloud that took several minutes to disperse. When it did, Benzo leapt out of the hover and took off toward the center of the crater. I shrugged and jogged after him.
He stopped just south of the middle in front of a very large cactus that was surrounded by a faintly-glowing green cloud. "This is Marnela," he told me matter-of-factly, like there was nothing out of the ordinary in the fact that he appeared to be introducing me to a large houseplant.
"This is a cactus," I contradicted him.
"This is *Marnela,* the *Cactuar*," he insisted. "Well, properly she is a cactus, but think of her as an adult Cactuar if it helps. And Marnela, this is Nhadala, our forewoman."
I was starting to wonder if maybe the camp interpreter wasn't just a little bit cracked when the cactus started vibrating and squeaking at me. I jumped and fell over. The cactus squeaked even louder and Benzo laughed with it.
"Here," he said. "I'll translate. She's saying, 'Don't worry about it. Most people are surprised when they first see us. I am Marnela, the leader of the Cactuar Nation.'"
I blinked. "Benzo, you brought me all the way out here in the middle of the day when there's work I could be doing so you could pull a ventriloquist act with a plant?"
'Marnela' started squeaking again. "'What do I have to do to prove I'm sentient? Sing the Hymn of the Fayth?'" In tones not that far off from the ones Naaga produces when she's trying to sing two octaves too high for her range, the cactus began squealing out the melody to the Hymn of the Fayth.
This was a little too creepy for my taste. "Okay, okay, okay, so you really are a talking Cactuar. Cactus. Whichever," I said, mainly to make sure it--Benzo--she?--didn't decide to use 1,000 Needles on me to prove that even cacti can get insulted. "Are you the only one?"
Benzo shook his head, but Marnela was already talking. "'Of course not. We all speak the Cactuar language. I just happen to understand yours as well. Actually, I was the one who asked Benzo to come. We of the Cactaur Nation need your help.'" Benzo broke off and looked at Marnela. "Are you sure we should be doing this before we establish formal diplomatic relations? We haven't sent an official ambassador out here or anything."
Marnela started talking, and Benzo listened intently. "What'd she say?" I asked. Was I actually buying this stuff?
"She said that we could do that later; this was more important. Apparently she's felt some kind of large fiend presence in the desert lately. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but...a swarm of something, or maybe...what?" He stopped to listen. "...a big monster? Three heads? It seems kind of farfetched, but these days I suppose anything is possible."
"We can barely handle our own camp, Marnela. How the hell are we supposed to deal with fiend problems too?"
Squeak squeak. "'It doesn't have to be done right away. We have some time left, and when they come I can hold them off for a little while. When my strength fails, the Ten Gatekeepers will be able to protect us for even longer. But sooner or later, something must be done. You must be on guard every minute. This desert holds more power than you know.'"
"I spent two decades of my life at Home," I shot out before I could stop myself. Who knew where 'Nhadala' was supposed to have lived when she was a kid--probably nowhere near where Benzo or any of the others had been. "I know what the Sanubia Desert's like."
The squeaking grew to a fever pitch as the arms of the Cactuar quivered. "'My child,'" Benzo translated, "'you have so much to learn. You claim to know the very nature of the desert sands and yet you did not even know that Cactuars talk.'"
"Hey! Hey, slackers!" came a nasally mechanical voice from the direction of the hover. My head snapped around so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash. It was Picket. "Get back to camp already! There's a problem!"
"What problem?!" I demanded in a yell.
"Just get back!" And the thing shot off.
"Come on, Benzo, we'd better get a move on. Could be serious." I cracked my knuckles. "Bye, Marnela. We'll be back." She squeaked one more time and fell silent. Benzo and I raced back to the hover and took off.
*****
I was on pins and needles for the entire flight back, and I nearly crashed the hover more than once because my hands were so tense that I had to take Rin's two deep breaths and count to ten about five times. Apparently no one was dead or Picket probably would've mentioned it, but anything short of that could've happened. No one said anything and the silence except for the dull whirr of the engine was killing me and when Benzo hit the windshield wiper button by mistake I was so startled our altitude soared fifty feet and then dropped a hundred.
I was on the ground before the engines were even off, looking around for the crisis. Dnac rushed up to me. "Nhadala," he panted, "it's almost noon. The freight hover shoulda been here hours ago, and we haven't seen hide nor hair of it."
Right away I stopped dead, looking for something to throw. Slowly, I turned toward him and stared menacingly at him before I lost it and yelled, "You brought me back here in a blind panic because your damn shipment of canned baked beans hasn't arrived yet?! What are you idiots doing around here, still playing Hearts and getting drunk?! Get back to work and don't waste my time like this!"
No one moved. "Nhadala," Redeci said quietly, "there's a massive sandstorm coming in from the north."
"We think maybe the hover got caught up in it on its way from Djose," Jock explained. "Amateur pilots, y'know, it can get dangerous out there."
Cred. Of course something like this would happen on my first day. I ran a hand through my sandswept hair and tried to decide what I was supposed to do here. "Does anyone have a radio?" I asked meekly after a minute.
"I have the emergency commsphere," Goma answered, running to get it and hand it to me. I took it and flipped it on. The default connection was apparently Djose, so I was dialing within ten seconds and had a tech on the phone in twenty. About ten minutes--of course, like Gippal would rearrange his schedule for anything--after that, I had Mr. Smooth on the line and asked him what the hell had happened to the freight hover.
"Hey, I'm not sure," he said casually, like he was telling me that he wasn't sure whether the Beasts or the Fangs were gonna win the exhibition match on Thursday. "We got a distress call around eight-thirty AM. Since then, nothing. You guys had any problems with sandstorms today?"
I brushed another renegade lock of hair away from my goggles and looked off into the distance. A large spiraling cloud of dust was rising just over the horizon line. "Yeah," I replied.
"That might be your problem. Look, I'm not an expert, but I hear those things move pretty fast. If I were you and you're in the way, I'd get your butts outta whatever expanse you're in right now and head to the safest place you can get."
"But what about our freight hover? We're dead in the water unless we can get some equipment and diggers out here!"
"Those're the breaks, sweetheart. Why don't you cover your ass and then we'll do lunch sometime, okay? Buh-bye."
Oh, no way, it was not possible that he was doing this to me. "Gippal?! GIPPAL?! Get back here!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. But it was hopeless. He was already gone. I tried calling back three times, but the hassled tech informed me with increasing levels of annoyance and then outright hostility that Mr. Gippal had gone out for the day. Thanks for nothing, you jerk.
Redeci was tapping me on the shoulder. "Uhm...Nhadala? What are we going to do?"
I turned to her. "About the freight hover?"
"No." She shook her head and pointed. "About that."
The sandstorm was rising quickly now and getting larger almost before my eyes. "You guys've been here a while," I snapped to the team. "How long do we have before it gets here?"
"Maybe ten minutes," Nedus answered.
I literally felt the blood drain from my face. Tyssed, we were screwed. "All right," I ordered, speaking without any benefit of thought whatsoever, "We don't really have a choice here. Load whatever you can carry onto the hovers within the next fifteen minutes, or we leave it behind. We're relocating to the Western Expanse."
"What do we take?!" Tuc cried desperately. It might have been the first time I actually heard him say something.
"Get the food and blankets first. Equipment shelves and that tent second, one of the living tents and the cots third. We'll grab the second residential tent if we have time. Right now we've just gotta move!"
I darted into the second tent to grab my gear bag and then into the storage tent, where I started cramming every empty compartment in my bag with all the cans it could hold. When it was stuffed, I grabbed two of the plywood boards that were serving as artifact shelves and raced out to the hover I'd used earlier that morning. The cargo space was almost nil, but I managed to fit the boards in the back and dump the bag out on the floor. Cans rolled all over the inside of the hover, but none of them fell out and in either case I was already gone.
The three brothers had the last of the food and the boards inside the second hover when I got back, and Jock and Goma were dismantling the equipment tent. I dashed over to help Redeci and Benzo with the larger living tent. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the storm getting larger and larger as it neared the camp. How much time did we have? I glanced frantically at my watch. Four minutes.
We almost ripped the canvas in our hurry to get the tent down and--the hardest part--load it into the last hover. Hovers are pretty light craft that are supposed to be used for passengers. As a result, their cargo holds are tiny--dammit, that's what freight hovers are for! Why hadn't anyone left us heavier transport in case of an emergency? Gippal must have had even less idea about what we were in for than I had.
"Nhadala, the last tent!" Redeci called over the roar of the wind, which was getting almost deafening now.
"We don't have time!" I yelled back. "Get in the hover and let's get out of here!" I practically launched myself into the pilot's seat of the first hover and she, Goma and Benzo raced in after me. Jock, Nedus, and Dnac had already taken off in the second one, and the other two brothers stuffed themselves and Picket in the third and blasted into the air.
"All right, people, hang onto your goggles!" I shouted against the wind, slamming the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor. We lurched violently.
"Nhadala!" Goma bellowed right into my ear. "Hurry!"
I shot a rapid glance back. We were the last of the three hovers in the air. The sandstorm was right behind us. As I watched, it blazed into the camp. The canvas and poles of the last tent went flying in all directions. One of the poles hit the ground from maybe two hundred feet up and literally bent in half. In a couple seconds, that could be us, except that we'd hit the ground and explode on impact. "Come on, GO!" I cried at the engine. Finally we lurched again and shot forward along the sand. I banged down with one gloved fist on the altitude control until we were up in the air and tore out of the claws of the sandstorm like a One-Eye out of hell.