(The Silence of Ancient Light, continued)
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Grey waves rolled under grey skies, and the small boat rolled northward with them. The human crew learned their Kwakitl stowaway’s name, Ca-Tren, and Ca-Tren seemed eager to prove her usefulness aboard. Despite her youth, it quickly became clear that Ca-Tren knew the boat’s systems well, and she proved to be quite a good sailor. Growing up in a seafaring community would do that, Anna surmised.
Ca-Tren also impressed the humans with how quickly she seemed to pick up on their verbal instructions, not waiting for the tablet’s translation before carrying out a task. Jaci ascribed it to being a fast learner of languages, while Anna thought it more likely due to Ca-Tren’s knowledge of the boat, knowing what’s needed before being told.
“A bit of both, probably,” Laxmi concluded.
The hours rolled on toward mid-morning, and the southeast trade freshened, quartering around more southerly as the gusts grew stronger. Fragments of cloud, torn from the overcast above, whipped from west to east high overhead, while the southward skies turned ominously dark. The prevailing southeast swell gained a southwest component, taller and steeper, and the small boat surfed down the northeastern faces of the waves as they caught up and rolled under them.
Anna and Ca-Tren went forward together, and wordlessly they reefed the sail, lowering the gaff to reduce its height and lashing the lower quarters to the boom, while Jaci struggled with the tiller to keep the waves to the aft port quarter.
“What is it with these storms always finding us?” Laxmi complained once all were back in the cockpit. She turned and looked aft at the oncoming rollers and blackening sky.
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(2,539 words; 10 min 9 sec reading time)
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Kepler 62f, you’ll recall, is a waterworld, a planet of mostly ocean, with scattered chains of islands strewn like pearls across the deep blue. Yes, as Aniara approached the planet, Anna’s crew did spot some small continents, or perhaps just very large islands, but the total landmass of this planet’s surface is a very small fraction, and much like Earth’s Southern Ocean, that leaves an effectively unlimited fetch for winds and waves to build. So there are a lot of storms.
Mostly, though, these are not huge hurricanes, rather moderate cyclones, quick to appear, and just as quick to disappear. Sometimes as well a storm is not entirely unuseful, especially if it’s sitting right over the top of those who are looking for you when you don’t wish to be found, while you ride it out at the edge.
Anna, Laxmi, Jaci, and their stowaway Ca-Tren, who may be as much guide as she is guest, are desperate to evade the Orta, but just how far can they get in their ancient fishing sailboat when the adversary has high levels of technology at their command?
As always, I welcome your thoughts, comments, and suggestions. One such recently had to do with the scene titles. I must admit that for the most part these titles are afterthoughts, since after all, how many books have you read where each scene has its own title? However, I am trying to give a bit more thought to these titles going forward. They are, after all, representing the work on the website, and if ever I hope to attract readers to an eventual book, first I must attract them to this site. Tell me what you think! How would you have titled some of the earlier scenes? How would you title this scene?
header image credit: user:Artie_Navarre / pixabay.com under Pixabay License
Matt Fraser 