The Challenge (46 page)

“I’m stuck. Looks like I’m going for a swim, but I’ll test the water first.”

Tessa dipped her kit into the sea. The water contained no poisons or acids. After making sure her kit and knife were firmly attached to her suit, she jumped overboard, expecting to swim. Except she sank to the bottom like
bendar
.

KAHN PEERED INTO the monitor, listening to Tessa’s play-by-play, his heart dancing up his throat, his fists clenched, his thoughts unsteady. Three quarters of the candidates who attempted the Challenge failed. The test was complex. While he had every confidence in Tessa’s abilities, one mistake could be her last.

“Breathe,” Zical teased him.

“She’ll do fine,” Dora agreed. “She’s very adaptable. And she . . . Purple alert! Ships dropping out of hyperspace.” Sirens blared. Warning lights blinked.

Kahn tore his gaze from Tessa on Laptiva and the monitoring device to count three ships dropping out of hyperspace. Those ships shouldn’t be here.

“Who are they?” Kahn demanded.

“Endekians.” Dora’s voice changed into the clipped tones of battle mode. “They are locking cannons on our communications and flight bay. They are firing.”

Damn. Normally, he’d order Dora to retreat, but he wasn’t abandoning Tessa.

“Shields up,” Kahn ordered. “Return fire.”

“Compliance. Brace for impact.”

Kahn used his psi to lock his body to the deck, used his shields to protect him from a sudden depressurization in case of a hull breach or from flying debris. Everyone on board did the same, except for the baby whom Miri and Etru secured between them.

Several explosions rocked them. “We’ve taken three hits. Communications are down. There’s a fire in the shuttle bay. Engines are damaged.”

“Estimated time to repair?” Kahn asked.

“Unknown.”

“Get on it. I’ll help.”

“Compliance.”

Kahn turned back to the Laptiva monitor. He could no longer see or hear Tessa. The screen had gone blank.

UNDERWATER, TESSA shut down her shield tight. She could hold her breath for maybe a minute, not enough time to walk to the island. Swimming was out of the question. She needed to induce her null-grav. Summoning up the proper frustration wasn’t so difficult with her life at stake.

She shot to the surface with her null-grav, gulped several deep breaths of air, then again sank to the bottom. She walked across the sand, until she once again used the null-grav to breathe. She had no idea if this was the process she was supposed to use or if a more efficient system was possible. However, she made slow but steady forward progress.

When hours later, she finally reached the shallow waters of the next island, she didn’t immediately crawl onto the beach. Watching from the water, she surveyed the place for danger. When she saw a boat like the one she’d abandoned pulled up on the shore, the hair on the back of her neck prickled.

All was not as it seemed. Was she alone here?

Thirsty and hungry, she realized that she needed to drink soon or risk dehydration. Food she could do without for the entire three days if necessary, but after her exertions, her body was demanding nourishment and liquids. The moment she rose from the water, a table laden with food and drink appeared on the beach out of nowhere. She’d suspected the Challenge might have been constructed by the same race that had invented the suits, but the technology still astounded her.

“How convenient. I think up what I need and it appears.” Cautiously, Tessa strode past the sumptuous repast into the tree lines beyond, snagging a drinking vessel and a piece of fruit on the way. While it appeared the food was her reward for reaching this stage, she didn’t make any assumptions. Kahn had taught her that much. And more.

Thanks to him, she’d survived the water test. The foliage reminded her of Puerto Rico, but instead of tropical palms and dense underbrush in shades of green, here the dominant colors were henna, fawn and hazel. Tortoise-shell colored birds nested in the trees and cawed to one another. She saw no insects, but tiny lizard-like creatures sunned on—

“What the hell?”

The fruit in her hand vibrated. Tessa dropped the fruit and moved back several steps. A tiny bug-like creature ate through the dun-colored rind, it’s sharp teeth ripping the fruit and devouring it in slurping gulps.

“Well, I’m glad I didn’t eat you.” She imagined that ravenous bug biting her face, or worse, suppose she’d swallowed the creature and it had eaten through her stomach to get out?

The bug finished its meal and slithered away, leaving nothing behind. Thirsty after the long “swim” and with the hot sun drawing moisture from her skin, she had to replace the body fluids she’d lost. Reluctant to abandon the beverage container without further examination, Tessa set it down and eyed it. “Are you another trick?”

Strengthening her shields, she unscrewed the cap, waited for something nasty to crawl out. But nothing did. So she poured a few drops into the tester, waited the requisite thirty seconds and when the light burned bright purple, signaling it was safe to drink, she allowed herself one swallow.

“Tastes fine, but we’ll give it a few minutes in my stomach before drinking more.” She carefully recapped the weird-shaped vessel that reminded her of a mix between a canteen and a thermos, attaching it to her suit. With no desire at all to return to the feast and the possibility of more bugs, she headed straight across the island’s interior.

Along the way, she spied some fruit growing within easy reach and popped them into the tester. The yellow fruit tested green, poisonous to her system, and she threw them away. However, the red fruit were okay, but she remained cautious, taking just a few bites and washing it down with more water.

Two hours of solid walking brought her to the farthest beach where she could clearly see the next island in the distance, which she hoped to make before nightfall. Another boat waited there for her use, but this time, she saw no paddle. She supposed leaving the other paddle behind was her first mistake, but one she could overcome. After a half hour of scrounging through the jungle, she found a short wide branch that would do. However, when she returned to the boat, it was no longer there.

And the next island now appeared twice as far away.

“KAHN, WE’VE got another problem,” Zical’s face was grim, his purple eyes fraught with worry.

“What?” Kahn snapped as he perused the damage reports as they came in.

“We struck two of their ships that appear dead in space, but the other one is operational and—”

“They’re about to attack again?”

“Worse.” Zical peered at his instruments, his eyes drawn together in a frown. “The Endekians are focusing sensors on Tessa. Dora says there’s a high probability they may try to interfere with the Challenge.”

“Stars!” Kahn dropped the damage reports onto the console. He’d figured Jypeg was after him—not her. “We have to warn Tessa.” The Challenge was difficult enough for the candidate without hostile interference. Stress kicked adrenaline into Kahn’s system, and he ached to fight someone, smack his fist into Jypeg’s yellow face. But he had to think, suppress the rage erupting in him like a volcano. “We need to warn Tessa,” Kahn muttered. “But how?”

“Even if we could warn her, won’t that break Challenge rules and cause her death?” Zical asked.

“We should contact the Federation,” Etru advised as he came onto the bridge with Azrel, Corban, and the Osarian.

Kahn shook his head. “Communications are still down.”

“I’m working on it,” Dora informed them.

“We must get Tessa out of there,” Osari said in his flat voice.

Dora again inserted herself into the conversation. “While the shuttle isn’t damaged, the flight hatch is fused shut from the fire. A rescue operation isn’t possible at this time.”

Kahn’s frustration peaked. “There must be something we can do.”

Dora spoke hesitantly. “I can contact her through the earrings and the Federation need not know.”

“Do it,” Kahn didn’t hesitate.

Corban lifted an eyebrow and put his arm over his wife’s shoulder. Azrel nodded agreement. “Some rules are meant to be broken. If—”

Dora interrupted, “The Endekians have just launched a shuttle to Laptiva.”

“Dora, patch Tessa through the speaker so we can all contribute,” Kahn ordered.

“Compliance.”

“Tessa, can you hear me?” Kahn kept his voice level, but his fingers gripped the console so hard his bronzed knuckles turned a sickly tan.

Everyone on the bridge stopped talking and waited to hear Tessa’s answer. There was nothing.

“Are the earrings still working?”

“Yes. Either the Endekians are jamming the signal. Or, she’s simply not responding.”

TESSA RECALLED the amount of emotional energy required to null-grav her to the surface to breathe, rechecked the distance to the next island and figured “swimming” that expanse of water would tax her limits. And using her psi to go that far was out of the question. She might not have a boat, but she could float partway on a log. But she saw no handy logs floating around or nearby, and she couldn’t hack down a palm with just her knife.

Returning to a shady spot on the beach, she took a swig of water from her canteen and ate one of the red fruit. The golden obelisk in the distance seemed farther away than when she’d began her journey earlier this morning.

Obviously, other candidates completed the Challenge, so there had to be a way to get there. She couldn’t swim, didn’t have a boat, had no way to build a boat. If only she had a flitter like the one Kahn had used on Zenon Prime.

Tessa blinked.

On the beach in front of her—which had previously been empty—now sat an enormous creature that had a head like an giant squid, a body like a whale, and too many tentacles for her to count. Part of the celadon-pearl creature was on the beach, but she had the impression that most of the body remained in the water. Two huge periwinkle eyes on the massive head stared at her. She sensed nothing from the creature, no hostility, no curiosity, no interest. “Hello there.”

“Hello there,” the creature repeated her words, in her voice.

She tried to communicate again. “Do you live here?”

“Do you live here?” the creature mimicked, its impersonation of her perfect.

She had no idea if the creature was trying to communicate or not. Parrots on Earth could talk, even sing songs, but they had no idea what the words meant. Then again, the creature might be repeating her words in an attempt to learn her language.

Tessa pointed to herself. “Tessa.”

“Tessa,” the creature obediently repeated.

She pointed to the sand. “Beach.”

“Beach.”

She pointed to a tree. “Tree.”