Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Sazahk decided he was more relieved than disappointed when Garin packed up his stuff the next morning and followed Sazahk west without a word.

On one hand, being free to pursue his own research how he saw fit with no need to fend off meddling would have been nice. On the other, Patrick would have had his head for recklessness and Sazahk didn't want to deal with that either. And, of course, he supposed, the Dead Zone could be dangerous and terrain with high geothermal activity was more dangerous still and a second person did significantly reduce the risk of serious injury and death.

Not that Sazahk would admit that to Garin.

The man had a hugely inflated sense of his own importance, as it was. Did he think everyone around him would throw their lives away if he didn't hound them every second of every day? How did Dom breathe under that oppression?

Sazahk's scar twinged, and he clenched his fist around the sleeve of his shirt to keep from rubbing it. He felt Garin's eyes on him and he didn't want the human to see the straight line of scar tissue at the base of his skull. The man didn't need another reason to see him as weak and dysfunctional.

"Looks like we're closing in on your hot springs." Garin pointed with his chin to the horizon, where billows of steam peeked out from over the ridge ahead.

Sazahk's heart skipped at the snaking plumes. "Steam like that means there could be more than hot springs. There could be mud pots, fumaroles, maybe even geysers. None of those things support the sort of life a hot spring might, but they're still fascinating geological formations. It might spur Qeshian geologists to visit and the more scientific interest in the Dead Zone, the better. We've ignored it for far too long."

Sazahk's fingers turned gray with self-consciousness when Garin huffed a laugh and he tangled them in front of his body to hide them. Garin didn't reply other than that, but he didn't sneer either. He sped up to match Sazahk's pace, loping along easily under his massive pack. In his defense, he'd never sneered at Sazahk. Argued plenty, but never sneered. That was more than could be said for some people Sazahk had had the displeasure of working with.

Despite how near the ridge looked, the sky darkened before they began their ascent.

Garin dropped his pack when they crested a mound. "We'll make camp here."

"We can't go a little farther?" Sazahk stopped at the edge of the plateau and stared up the hill.

"And risk breaking an ankle in the dark?" Garin began meticulously picking rocks out of a two-by-six spot on the ground like the night before. "No."

"The sun's barely set. This isn't dark." Sazahk knew Garin was right. The risk-reward analysis had a clear outcome.

"The hot springs aren't going anywhere." Garin pried a particularly pointy rock out of the ground and smoothed out the hole. "And you'll be able to see them better in the morning, anyway."

"We have flashlights." Sazahk dropped his pack on the other side of the mound top from Garin, despite his arguing. It was only their second day. He had at least twenty-six more. But impatience still had him picking at the loose thread on his pack's left strap.

"We should save the batteries for when we actually need them." Garin rolled out his sleeping bag, then walked around the perimeter of the camp, picking up twigs and sticks.

Sazahk crossed his arms over his knees and watched him. "They're solar-powered."

"There's no sunlight in caves."

Sazahk pressed his lips together. Garin had him there. Not that Sazahk had been advocating for using the flashlights and climbing the ridge, anyway. He'd already sat down. But he'd still fought for the last word like his brother would have.

Blue crawled up the back of Sazahk's hands. He really had lost his way if he was acting like his brother.

Garin glanced at him and Sazahk quickly willed the colors away. Just as quickly, Garin dropped to his haunches and ducked his head as he built up a little pile of twigs.

Sazahk scrutinized his body language with narrowed eyes. He knew Garin walked on eggshells around him, afraid to set off another argument. The best defense being a good offense wasn't a philosophy Sazahk normally ascribed to, but with men like Garin, men used to telling other people what to do, throwing their weight around, and getting their way, it was the best he'd come up with.

He wouldn't let men with agendas derail him again.

His scar throbbed and he dug his fingertips into his elbows.

Garin sat back when his little pile caught ablaze and fed in the larger sticks he'd gathered as they'd hiked that day. He really was very good at fire-starting. Sazahk had assumed it was a dead skill in this day and age. Surely solar-powered space heaters existed, though he supposed they'd have had to carry those, and his bag was bursting at the seams as it was.

"How many fires have you started in your life?"

Garin's head popped up, eyebrows raising either in surprise at the question or surprise that Sazahk was addressing him at all. "In my life?"

"Yes." Sazahk tilted his head as he studied Garin's rough hands and rangy body. The jaw of his narrow face had darkened with stubble over the last couple of days. "I've started exactly zero fires and I'm sure that's the median number of fires started by all sentient individuals in the sector. Who needs to start fires these days?"

"People traveling through places they shouldn't be," Garin chuckled. He shuffled back to sit on his sleeping bag and unpacked two ration bars. "I've built too many to count, but since the Human government has a record of every training exercise and mission I've ever been on, you could probably estimate based on mission type, environment, and days deployed."

"I'm told most of your record is redacted." Sazahk tried to catch the bar Garin tossed him, but it bounced off his fingers and fell to the ground. Garin laughed, but there wasn't any mockery in the sound.

"Yeah, I bet it is." Garin ripped open his bar's wrapper. "Can't have the citizenry or our allies knowing some of the stuff we got up to."

"Your allies are hardly capable of occupying the moral high ground." Sazahk peeled back the crinkly wrapper of his ration bar. "The Klah'Eel and Qesh get up to as many duplicitous and underhanded dealings as the Humans do, I'm sure."

"Oh, the Qesh may not deserve it, but they're perfectly capable of occupying it." Garin grinned and ripped a piece off the dry ration bar with his teeth.

"That's certainly true." Sazahk knew it more than most. He watched Garin wolf down his ration bar as he chewed his more sedately. "You weren't raised with money."

Garin paused mid-crumpling his wrapper. Then he finished scrunching it into a ball and stowed it in his pack. Sazahk didn't know if that was out of respect for the environment or a habit born from camping behind enemy lines, but he appreciated it, nonetheless. "Nope." Garin rested his elbows on his bent knees. "What gives me away?"

"The way you eat." Sazahk set aside his half-finished ration bar, not hungry enough to fully finish it. "The way you sit. The fact that you ever had such a dangerous job as the Vanguard. I've heard of them, and the details that aren't redacted imply a chilling horror in the details that are."

Garin's face tightened, but he didn't drop his smile.

"And the fact that you still have a dangerous job," Sazahk went on. "Not to mention pure statistics. The majority of Human citizens are in financially precarious circumstances due to the Human species state's persistently poor economy and lack of basic social safety net, so to assume that you were raised with little money would be fair even without the additional evidence."

Garin's rueful smile twitched. "Spot on."

Sazahk shrugged a shoulder. He usually was.

"You, on the other hand, grew up with a silver spoon in your mouth. Am I right?" Garin fished out the blood testing device from the outside pocket of Sazahk's pack and pricked himself.

Sazahk drummed his fingers on his knees and accepted the used test strip. "You say that because you know who my brother is."

Garin swept his eyes up and down Sazahk's body, but Sazahk didn't know what he saw that gave away his family's social status. "Not just that."

"Qeshian culture doesn't care much for silver." Sazahk pricked himself, then stowed the device and strips away for later analysis. "It was never considered a precious resource or luxury item, and it was certainly never used for expensive cutlery. Ivory is the real marker of wealth." He dug through his pack and pulled his sleeping bag free of the mess it had tangled itself around, dragging a microscope and a pair of pants out with it. "But yes, I had what one might consider a privileged life."

Garin's green eyes bore into him. "Until you threw it away."

Sazahk tensed, scrunching the half rolled-out sleeping bag in his fists. A mottled mess of orange, pink, purple, blue, gray, and black boiled up his forearms. "I think we've reached an acceptable limit of personal exchanges for one night."

Did he know? Serihk had told him the records were sealed. His brother had probably sealed the records himself, if only to protect their family's reputation. The shame had nearly killed their father.

But if Garin had gotten his hands on maps of caves hidden under Qesha's Dead Zone, he could have gotten his hands on the dirty secrets hidden under the Qesh's bureaucracy.

Sazahk's hands shook as he stuffed the fallen microscope and pants back into his bag. But he didn't care if Garin knew. He didn't care what Garin thought of him. And he hadn't done anything wrong in the first place. Not really. No matter what people said.

Garin swore softly as Sazahk zipped his pack closed. "I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm talking about. I just know you were with the Carta Cartel for a while, and I made an assumption. I'm sorry."

"Don't humans have some silly thing they say about assuming things?" Sazahk wiggled into the warmth of his bag. He smacked his knee against a rock lodged under him and winced.

"That it makes an ass out of you and me." Garin dropped his chin and shook his head. "Yeah, my mother loves that saying."

"That's the one." Sazahk twitched as another rock poked him in the ribs.

"The ground's a lot more comfortable if you pull the rocks out first." Garin started to get up. "I can help?—"

"No." Sazahk shot him a glare to sit him back down. He could pull the rocks out of his own sleeping spot. If he cared enough to. Which he didn't. He rolled onto his side to give Garin his back. "Goodnight."

For a moment, the crackle of the fire was his only response. Then Garin sighed. "Goodnight."

Sazahk lay awake as Garin bustled quietly for the better part of an hour, rustling through his pack, scrolling through his tablet, breathing, existing. Then Garin banked the fire, tucked into his sleeping bag, and fell quiet. Sazahk lay staring into the blackness of the Dead Zone, until Garin's breath fell into the rhythm of sleep, and he finally closed his eyes.

The next morning, Sazahk rose the moment the sun's light hit his eyelids.

The Dead Zone had hot springs. It had to.

He clambered out of his blankets. With steam like the kind illuminated in the dim dawn light, Sazahk couldn't imagine he'd climb that ridge and look down on a valley not dotted with hot springs and mud pots.

And where there were hot springs, there were microbial mats. At least, in all the natural hot springs Sazahk had ever seen. He stuffed his sleeping bag into his pack, light green engulfing his fingers. The discoveries waiting over that ridge were things he had only ever dreamed of.

"Eat something."

Sazahk glared at the tube of protein paste Garin held out to him, then looked up at the man himself. Stubble darkened his jaw and his brown hair stood up from sleep, but his eyes glared at Sazahk as alert and stern as ever. Every morning protein paste, every night ration bars.

Cyanobacteria, discoveries, hot springs. Sazahk mentally chanted the happy words to himself as he accepted the tube without complaint.

He didn't want to spend his morning bickering with Garin. He squeezed the dense contents of the tube into his mouth and choked it down with a swig of their precious water. He wanted to spend it collecting bacteria samples, and he would get to. Garin's stupid protein paste wouldn't bring him down.

In a matter of minutes, Sazahk had his bag packed. He took special care to stow his most useful supplies in the easily reached pockets of the straps around his hips, so nothing would slow him down as he worked.

Garin glanced at Sazahk's fingers tapping against his thigh as he crouched down beside the coals. "The hot springs aren't going anywhere."

Sazahk scowled. "Neither are you at the rate you're moving."

"Give me two seconds, Sazahk," Garin scowled back. He shoveled dirt over the remnants of their fire.

"To prevent wildfires from raging through a dead desert?"

Garin shot him a look, and Sazahk swept a hand at their surroundings.

"The remaining organic matter is highly flammable, as you've clearly demonstrated these past two nights, but there's not near enough of it to fuel a blaze of any significant magnitude." Sazahk cocked his head and dropped his hand back to his side. "And even if it did, that might not be such a bad thing. Forest fires are rejuvenating events for ecological systems. They break down dead matter and create rich soil for the next generation of plants. In fact, a fire may be exactly what this landscape needs."

"We can go now."

Sazahk tore his eyes away from the dead shrub he'd been picturing engulfed in flames and looked at Garin. He had his thumbs hooked through his pack straps and a single eyebrow raised.

Sazahk spun on his heel. "Wonderful."

The shrub had had none of the markers of a pyrophytic species, anyway.

Sazahk charged up the ridge, not slowed down by the loose rocks giving way under his boots. He caught himself as he slipped, his fingers digging into the dry dirt as he scrabbled to the edge of the ridge. When he finally reached the top, his heart sang.

"Holy shit," Garin breathed out beside him with all appropriate reverence.

Colors.

Colors spread out before them as vibrant and wild as a newborn qesh's skin.

Pools of blue and green dotted the landscape, some small as a plate and some large as lakes. Swathes of brilliant oranges, bright yellows, and deep browns spilled out around them. Pure white mineral buildups covered the ground as though they'd stumbled upon the aftermath of a blizzard. Above it all, steam drifted lazily in the brisk morning air.

Sazahk let out a delighted, disbelieving laugh. "Look at it! Look at it! All this time and no one ever knew."

"No one ever cared." Garin watched him with a bemused smile on his thin lips. The smile grew into a chuckle when Sazahk met his eyes, and he nodded toward the valley. "Go on then."

Sazahk needed no more encouragement. "And they call this place the Dead Zone. Dead!" He slipped and slid down to the nearest swatch of brown. "Does this place look dead to you?"

"It smells dead." Garin followed more carefully behind him.

Sazahk glanced back to see Garin crinkling his nose. The smell was rather potent, he supposed. He'd barely noticed it, but perhaps that was a failing. He scented the air more deliberately.

"Sulfur," Garin supplied and Sazahk nodded.

"Yes. It's interesting that the sulfur smell is so strong. It's quite common for hot springs, but it still tells us something about their chemical compositions." Sazahk approached a steaming blue pool so vivid it looked fake.

"Don't get too close," Garin called, quickening his pace the last few steps down the ridge to catch Sazahk. "It's hot."

Sazahk rolled his eyes. "Of course it's hot. It's a hot spring heated by magma from the very core of this planet. I know it's hot." He kneeled and gazed at the glistening, grooved microbial mat fed by the warm water overflowing from the blue pond. "But it's alive."

"I'm not sure thermophilic cyanobacteria count as alive for our purposes." Garin crouched beside Sazahk, avoiding stepping on the thick sludge of the bacterial filaments. Sazahk paused with his swab in hand and raised his eyebrows at Garin. Garin scowled. "Yes, I'm familiar with big words, too. I went to college, you know."

Sazahk shrugged and swabbed up a dollop of burnt-orange bacteria. "I didn't know. The vast majority of Human citizens don't obtain an education beyond basic literacy and numeracy, and I didn't think an occupation largely consisting of shooting guns and not getting shot by them required a great deal of academic study."

"I was an officer," Garin retorted as he followed Sazahk over to the edge of a green pool. "Strategy, tactics, psychology, ecology, weather patterns, technology. It did actually require an education."

"I didn't know you were an officer." Or what sort of knowledge being an officer required. Sazahk had never been much interested in the military. He bent low over a beautiful flow of yellow bacteria.

"Watch your hair." Garin caught Sazahk's braid before it slid into the thick cluster of microorganisms.

Sazahk sucked in a breath at the sudden nearness. His heart seized in his chest. But the terrified red quickly faded from the back of his hands and Sazahk shoved the rest of the color that he knew flooded his neck back below his collar. He grabbed his long braid and tugged it free of Garin's rough hands. "It's fine."

"It wasn't about to be." Garin eyed Sazahk's hair as Sazahk threw it over his shoulder and away from the hot water trickling across the ground. "It was about to be covered in slime."

"And that would still be fine." Sazahk leaned back onto his haunches and took a swab of the yellow bacteria. "A little slime on my hair isn't going to hurt it or me or be anything even remotely considered a big deal."

Garin looked horrified for a second before quickly shaking the expression away. "Sure, it'll be fine right up until you die from some horrible infection through your scalp."

Sazahk tsked and picked his way over the chemically burnt white ground to a different pool. "Most bacteria don't pose any harm. In fact, this sort of bacteria helps more than it hurts. The sort of bacteria found in other hot springs resembling these have been the kind that make oxygen, which every complex life form in the sector requires."

"Sazahk—"

"There's even evidence that some thermophilic bacteria can process arsenic into a less toxic compound." Sazahk skirted a cone-shaped buildup of siliceous sinter.

"Sazahk, wait?—"

Sazahk caught the motion out of the corner of his eye and swerved to avoid it, his chest tightening, and Garin yanked his hand back before it made contact. Thank the goddess. Sazahk couldn't take being grabbed again. His scar itched so badly he wanted to crawl out of his own skin.

"Just hold on." Garin raised his hands. "You can't go walking across ground like this."

Sazahk crossed his arms and gripped his biceps to hide the tremble in his fingers. "Walking is exactly how bipedal creatures cross solid terrain."

"Solid, sure, but I wouldn't bet your life that this ground is solid." Garin pointed at the crumbling, crisp white silica. "Any step could give out from under you."

Sazahk shifted his weight as he surveyed the surrounding ground. The places where he'd already stepped spider-webbed with cracks. The wind changed and blew a warm blanket of sulfur-scented air around them.

"Come on, Sazahk, I'm the one with the wilderness experience. Trust me on this." Garin held out a beseeching hand. His earnest green eyes under his well-shaped dark brows set in his symmetrical face made Sazahk's heart skip, and he scowled and stepped back.

"I'm not inclined to trust someone who didn't want me to be here at all. You sacrificed your opinion privileges when you refused to prioritize our entire reason for being here above your own mission performance." Sazahk knew Garin didn't care about the science or Sazahk. All he cared about was returning Sazahk back to Dom in one piece, so Dom would give him a nice bonus.

Garin's jaw ticked. "We're here now, Sazahk. The least you can do is not get yourself killed."

Sazahk bristled. "I will not get myself killed. Does no one think I have any survival instinct?"

Garin spread his arms wide to encompass their steaming surroundings. "You have demonstrated that instinct exactly zero times since I met you, so probably not, no."

Purple raced up Sazahk's forearms. He clenched his fists and opened his mouth to snarl back when the white cone beside him exploded into a column of boiling water.

"Shit!" Garin lunged forward and wrapped his arms around Sazahk.

Pain bloomed across Sazahk's face and hands as drops of scalding water hit his skin.

"Get down." Garin grabbed the back of Sazahk's head and tucked him in against his chest, shielding him from the screeching torrent of steam and water spewing into the sky beside them.

The roar of the geyser faded behind the thundering of Sazahk's pulse in his ears. Behind the beeps of medical equipment. The cold orders of a surgeon.

"Get off." Sazahk couldn't hear himself. He didn't even know if he'd said the words. Garin's hand clamped down around his scar, around his neck, pinned him, immobilized him.

"Come on." Garin curled his body around Sazahk's, blocking him from the geyser, and dragged him away, the blistering water raining down on them. "Keep your head down. You're okay."

"I—I'm not—" Sazahk's breath rattled in his lungs. His scar burned under Garin's palm. The operating room lights flashed in his eyes. He couldn't move. "Get off."

"Fucking hell, that's hot," Garin shouted over the thunderous cacophony of the geyser as a sudden jet of water hit his shoulder, soaking through his shirt. He wrenched Sazahk farther away and Sazahk's muscles snapped into action on instinct.

"Get off!" The words finally ripped from his throat loud enough to be heard, and he tore himself free of Garin's grip.

"Sazahk, what the hell?" Garin let him go but lost his balance and lurched forward.

Reality slammed back into Sazahk and time slowed as Garin's boot hit the brittle geyserite.

His leg punched through the ground, and his body pitched after it.

Words froze in horror in Sazahk's throat as he reached helplessly.

The shelf they stood on collapsed out from under Garin's weight, dropping him onto a slope slick with a thick yellow microbial mat. He slid fast through the mat, dropping toward a steaming cerulean-blue pool, and Sazahk's stomach dropped with him.

Hot. Hot. Hot. That thing was hot. That thing was dangerous. A hot spring like that could sear the flesh off a man's bones.

Garin twisted and yelled as he slid away, grabbing for anything but catching nothing.

Sazahk's heart stopped when Garin crashed into the pool, disappearing in a splash of impossibly beautiful water.

"Garin!" Sazahk scrambled after him, moving as fast as possible while avoiding Garin's fate. If he could get to him fast enough, if he could pull him out, if they had enough bandages, if they had enough ointment, if Sazahk could get him back to the research compound?—

Garin burst up through the water's surface, panting and spluttering.

"Garin!"

"I'm okay." Garin whipped the liquid out of his eyes and took a few shaky breaths, treading water. "I'm okay. It's not that hot."

Sazahk ran to the edge of the pool and held his hand over the rippling surface. When it didn't hurt, he plunged it in. Warm. Uncomfortably warm, but just warm. Sazahk dropped his chin to his heaving chest, his pounding heart slowing. "Thank the goddess."

Garin swam to the edge, dragging his pack behind him. "That was not fun."

"That could have been a lot worse than not fun. You have no idea how lucky you are." Sazahk grabbed the straps of Garin's pack and pulled it out of the water, finding it ripped open and a lot lighter than it should have been. "Geothermal springs like this can reach temperatures of hundreds of degrees, and that's not even considering the chemical compositions. It could have literally dissolved you."

"Yeah, I fucking know that, Sazahk." Garin hauled himself out of the pool and flopped onto his back.

Sazahk dropped Garin's waterlogged bag onto a dry bit of ground, then tore open his own pack and dug around for test kits.

"What are you doing?" Garin jerked away when Sazahk swiped the cotton end of a swap down his cheek.

"Making sure you're not dissolving slowly." Sazahk stuck the swab in a tube and squeezed in a testing solution.

"I'm not dissolving." Garin sat up and pushed a hand through his hair, flinging a few droplets free.

Sazahk swirled the swab around and watched the solution change color. "No, you're not."

The hot spring had a neutral pH level. Sazahk released the last of his tension and took a few deep breaths as the geyser above them that had started it all gurgled and spluttered. A neutral pH and a temperature like a warm bath. Sazahk sat down hard on the ground next to Garin. Talk about a bullet dodged.

They sat beside each other as the geyser quieted down and the pool's surface returned to perfect placidity. Sazahk's breath evened out until it was quiet enough again for Sazahk to hear Garin's steady breaths at his side.

"So." Garin turned to Sazahk and raised his eyebrows. "You gonna let me choose our path now?"