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“It’s nice to meet you all.” The human–Dom–dipped his head. His eyes reminded Fal’ran of Patrick’s, but far less striking.
“You as good a scientist as Sazahk?” Bar’in poked his head over Tar’s shoulder to see the screen as he put the finishing touches on Tar’s hair.
Dom’s cheeks pinkened. “I try not to compare.”
“Got any ideas for masking our communications?” Fal’ran shifted forward and leaned his elbows on his knees to be more in the camera’s frame. “The squads all have the same hardware, so there’s no privacy on any of the frequencies.”
Sazahk propped his tablet up against the radio he’d been fiddling with so that Dom faced them all without Sazahk needing to hold him. “And we haven’t had the time to devise a coded language.”
They’d been too busy building out their makeshift city alley and practicing traversal. It had taken two days on the obstacle course before Smith decided Bar’in and Tar were ready for the network of ropes he and Fal’ran had hung around the copse of Yelt trees.
“Yelt trees…” Dom squeezed his eyes shut and Fal’ran watched the gears of his brain shift contexts and spin to life. “Yelt trees…” He rotated his finger as though reeling the thought from his mind. “They have a very interesting root structure, don’t they? All connected?”
“Yes, they’re all connected. You wouldn’t even say ‘they’, you would say ‘it’.” Sazahk straightened up and Bar’in sighed as Sazahk prepared his lecture on the fascinating structure of Yelt trees for the third time. “A copse of Yelt trees is actually—”
“A single organism.” Dom nodded and a lock of his black hair flopped over his forehead. “You said you’ll be up in them? Could you use that?”
Fal’ran glanced at Bar’in, who shrugged and pulled his own hair free of its bun to braid it over his shoulder.
“Use the biological structures of the trees?” Sazahk repeated with a green furrow between his brows.
“Yes. If they’re all connected, you can use them like wires.” Dom disappeared off screen and reappeared holding a more advanced communication handheld. “Send the signals through the trees. It’s not secure, but…” he shrugged.
“But who would think to listen in on trees?” Fal’ran sat up, finally understanding. “You got a clever idea for sending and receiving the signals, too?”
“I think so.” Dom held up the sleek device in his hand–Qesh tech if Fal’ran had to guess–and pointed with his chin to the edge of the screen at the clunky Klah’Eel radio. “Grab that for me.”
While Tar prepared their weapons and Bar’in braided his hair, Fal’ran and Sazahk followed Dom’s instructions for opening and messing with their different radios. Fal’ran didn’t know what he was doing, or most of what they said, and Sazahk was a poor teacher, but Dom tried his best to explain.
Something, something, vibrations, waves, frequencies, something, something. An hour later, Fal’ran pressed a radio against a metal tent pole while Sazahk pressed another to a pole on the far side and held his ear over its speaker.
At Sazahk’s nod, Fal’ran murmured into the mouthpiece. “The Yelt trees are boring.”
“Hey!” Sazahk shot him a glare and Fal’ran burst out laughing.
“Does that mean it worked?” Dom leaned so close to the camera his face filled the screen. “What did he say? You heard him?”
“He said nothing useful, but I heard him.” Sazahk scowled and Fal’ran grinned back. “I think the only problem is—”
“What the hell is he doing here?”
Patrick Smith curled his fingers around the tent flap into a shaking fist. His clenched jaw ticked, his eyes flashed, and the burning scent of his hatred and fury slammed into Fal’ran like a land cruiser.
Dom folded inward, hiding, as though Smith might strike him through the video feed. “Hello, Captain Smith,” he managed in a small voice that made Fal’ran’s heart twinge.
“Do you know who the fuck that is?” Smith threw the tent flap closed and stomped into the room, jabbing a finger at Dom’s cringing face as though Dom hadn’t spoken.
Fal’ran, Bar’in, and Tar glanced at each other. When they turned to Sazahk, Fal’ran’s eyes widened at the scent and sight of the qesh–the man without a mean bone in his body in Fal’ran’s own words–covered in blue and purple, with rage gushing from his every pore.
Bar’in raised an eyebrow as though unaffected by Smith’s wrathful display, but his nerves scented the air. “Sazahk’s friend, Dom?”
Smith’s face twisted into a revolted sneer. “That is Dominic Turner. The fucking criminal mastermind who created the fear gas we unleashed on Tava. The gas that poisoned the entire fucking continent. That was his brainchild. His idea.”
“And so were the turbines cleaning it up.” Sazahk stormed forward until he stood in Smith’s face. “He designed those, too. He labored day and night to make them work and he didn’t have to. I didn’t architect those by myself. They would have been impossible without him.”
“They wouldn’t have been necessary without him.” Smith rocked onto his heels but balled his fists at his sides.
“He made a mistake. People do that.” Sazahk drew his shoulders in, but still smelled ready to fight. “He’s trying to fix it.”
