Duster puts his hands on his hips and opens his mouth to say something when I step into the lower deck corridor from the hold three hours later, then remembers himself and clears his throat, instead. He scratches the back of his head. 

"Well," he says.

I peer at him through the cat-eyes of my false glasses, exaggerating how I lean in to do so. "What's that, dear?"

"What the bloody heck are you supposed to be? A librarian?"

"I'm a reporter. Nobody's going to think twice about a reporter asking lots of questions."

I open my little leather purse and pull out a compact from among my recorder, one of Core's pistols, a pair of handcuffs and far more pens than anyone other than someone who writes for a living would carry. I've got a prod strapped to each leg under my skirt. I check my cat-eye makeup in the compact, then snap it shut and positively simper at Duster.

"Am I convincing enough? You wouldn't recognize me if you saw me in Griswold, would you?"

He digs his tongue into his cheek and looks me over again. I'm in a tweed jacket and skirt that Core bought me on his first payday after we got engaged, and the only reason I've kept it is because he was so proud to get me 'something nice with his own money'. My momma would never have let me out of the house in it, and if she knew Core was the one who'd gotten it, it'd be the olive in her martini. It's things like his fashion choices that remind me that Core grew up on a ranch in the middle of nowhere.

"Heh." Duster shakes his head slowly. "I wouldn't take a second look at you, dame, and that's just me being honest."

"Good. Now go get your mono ready while I put on my vapour suit."

He grumbles all the way down the corridor and through the airlock.

Once I join him outside, my vapour suit over my tweed disguise, Duster runs over the mono controls with me again. He waves his hand over the sideways crescent that is the control dashboard, the icons and gauges illuminated by the throw of light through the open outer door of the Verve's airlock.

"I've already got everything ready for a longer trip – high gears all programmed in. You'll have to get a lot of air to get out of this skypole hole, though, so keep an eye on the hover-turbine gauge, right here. Don't let the soal vaporizing levels get over eighty-five when you're higher than three hundred metres, or you'll overheat the engine."

I eye the gauge, then quirk an eyebrow at Duster. "And should that somehow happen?"

He glares at me through his suit's visor, his moustache all but bristling like an angry cat's fur. He stabs a finger at a small switch between the hover-turbine gauge and the vapourizing gauge.

"Press that down. But, I swear, dame, if you do it for fun, I am not to be held responsible for any and all revenge."

"Why, what's it do?"

"Shuts off the vapourizing unit."

"While I'm ninety metres off the ground? Sounds like revenge is prepackaged as part of the deal."

"That's because the other engine kicks in." Duster drops his gaze from mine to pat the mono's coppery side, and clears his throat. Still not looking at me, he scratches the back of his head.

I cross my arms over my chest – my double-layer of tweed and vapour-suit makes the motion stiff and uncomfortable. "What other engine? It's not petrol, is it? Those are illegal."

"Eh, no. Not petrol. Only... borderline illegal – and that's still legal, mind you, missy. It's something I made myself. It, eh..." He rubs a thumb along the scruff on his chin. "It runs on whiskey."

I roll my eyes and open the mono's little boot, where I stash my purse beside two extra prods, a canvas tarp, and a backup canister of soal. "Don't even start explaining. I don't want to know."

Duster puts his hands into his vapour-suit's pockets and shrugs, rocking back on his heels. "It was a bet. Won the cost of doing it three times over. Anyway, let me tell you, you switch over to it, and altitude won't be no problem any more. Speed either, for that matter."

I push past him and swing a leg over the mono's leather seat. "Well, don't sit up planning revenge – I'd rather trust my luck with the factory settings."

"Factory settings, she says." Duster snorts before I ignite the engine. "Mediocrity for the masses. This beauty's eighty-seven percent custom."

Not the most reassuring parting words to hear, considering the conversation they close. But the mono's engine roars in my ears, so I simply let go of one handlebar to wave as I turned away from the Verve, and Duster returns the gesture, his body visible as a dark-brown silhouette in the airlock door before the skypoles swallow both him and the rocket-jet. I'd already lined up all the plans to pull of this mission with Core and said my goodbyes to him in private, but as I crouch low over the mono and edged the speed up, I open my comm link at the same time I activate my visor's navigation aids.

I'm headed out now, dear.

Swell. I'm receiving you clearly. I'll check in with you every fifteen minutes until we've established that the link is stable over longer distances. All these vapours down here will probably interfere, but since ours is the only connection on this link, the signal will be stronger than most in this situation. Stay safe, love, and pull out as soon as there's a sign of trouble in Griswold, all right?

I'll do my best.

The relief and dearness of being connected to Core through the comm link again fills up my chest like a balloon – big and light and buoyant. But the visual link is still damaged, and, to be honest, I'm a little glad. As I weave between the skypoles towards the place my visor's typographic map indicates has a thinner growth of skypoles, I turn on the DNA-trace filter again. But the echoing rumble of the mono chases the ember-like signs of life away before I reach them, and the tree trunks are bare and deceptively flat-looking in the glare of the mono's frontbeam. Time seems to stop existing for a while as grey trees and roots and the black spaces between them flicker past me on either side. Then, at last, the swerves I take to avoid crashing head-on into the skypoles aren't so sharp, and the map on my visor blinks softly to alert me that I'm coming up on my destination. I shoot between two last, massive skypoles, then turn quickly to the right and open the throttle. The mono snarls, gorging itself on vapourized soal, and I spiral up and around the skypole, boots locked deep in the stirrups as I lean heavily in toward the tree to keep from capsizing. The strain makes my core ache before proximity alerts pop up on my visor, and the frontbeam finally hits something other than roots and trunks and empty air.

Branches.

They stick out from the trunk like quills on a porcupine, bare of any foliage until they fork out into thinner branches the thickness of my waist, where the dark green leaves, about the size of my hand, are close-packed like in a hedge. They don't grow any closer to the trunk the higher I go, so it turns out the whole canopy is like a shell connected to the trunk by the smooth scaffolding of straight branches. The vaporizing gauge flickers closer and closer to sixty five, but I'm saved from considering Duster's borderline-illegal reserve by the leaves curve together to meet me in front. Little prickles of light stab my eyes through hairline cracks in the thick canopy. Suddenly the mono charges into the leaves, snapping twigs scraping the sides and lashing my face, and then –

Wind. Sunlight. Clouds.

It's like bursting out of deep water.

A scream tin-whistles out of me and I pull the mono up in a steep curve, and at once Core swears unexpectedly over the comm link.

Viridian? Viridian, answer me!

I laugh shakily and release my death-grip on the mono's handlebars to relax back on the leather seat. "I'm fine, Core, I'm sorry, it's just so wonderful to see the sky again."

The mono hovering quietly now, I throw my arms over my head and stretch, blinking against the bright midday sunlight as I look down over the dark green, bunchy expanse that is the Ocean of Trees. It's actually beautiful from up here, the thick leaves shiny and rippled by the wind all the way to the western horizon where the dark blue line that is the ocean only just keeps the sky from touching the trees.

But my destination is elsewhere. It's idiotic to waste time and fuel admiring the view, so I swing the mono around to face the other direction The mountains rise up against the blue to my left, baffling in their size, but right ahead of me the sharp ridge of the cliff where ground drops into the canyon beneath me cut across my vision. The vaporizing gauge is at fifty-three by the time I gain enough altitude – two hundred fifty metres – to rev up over the canyon edge and level out over the rough scrubland before the foothills. The mono bounces as the turbines adjust to the new low altitude, then I pick up speed as I race eastward again, a plume of dust spewing up behind me. After the skypoles, the ride is smooth in comparison.

The link in my visor opens with a crackle, and Duster's voice booms into my ears. "How're you doin', dame?"

"Your mono's still in one piece, and so am I. I'm two hundred and forty-seven kilometres out from Griswold, ETA about two hours from now. How are the repairs going? You and Core playing nice?"

"Yes ma'am. Your He's got the exterior lights back online, and I'm on the last of the soldering for these big scratches now. I'll get to the turbine you stuck a branch in by eh, fifteen hundred hours."

It's warmer out here, free from the shadow of the skypoles, and vapour faultlines from the volcano off to my left are few and far between. But I keep the vapour suit on. I've got to keep my tweed clean. I open the vents in the back, however, to keep sweat from staining my shirt and my perfectly coiffed hair from going limp. Then I settle down on the mono's saddle-like seat and shift my gloved hands on the handlebars. I've got quite a ride ahead of me.

If not for Core sending me updates on the Verve's repairs, vapour activity, and news on sonar readings every fifteen minutes, I'm sure this trip would be more like a holiday joyride. I lock the cruise control at one hundred thirty KPH and relax into the vibration of the engine under me until every curve around the massive boulders scattered along the landscape and inclination in altitude to avoid cacti, thin cedars, and twiggy bushes feels is as smooth and natural as breathing. Thin, metallic-feathered micarunners scatter before me as I cross their wide nesting grounds full of shallow pebble nests, and a half-kilometre off I see bison at a watering hole before they vanish behind more red boulders.

The foothills draw ever closer ahead of me. When my visor map indicates they're little more than twenty five kilometres away, I glimpse the rapidly-moving white dot of a orbiting transmission station in the brassy blue sky above their peaks. Core dismisses the idea that it might be the origin of the sonar readings we're trying to identify when I suggest it to him, however.

"That's a government station," he explains, using the Verve's computer voice to 'speak aloud' for the benefit of Duster, who's personal comm was patched into our link for my mission. "Even with all the vapour interference we got down here, the signal coming off that thing is easy to identify. And it's in the midsphere – the readings I registered earlier today were from the exosphere."

Duster butts in. "How come you can read stuff from the exosphere, but, eh, you can't pick up, I dunno, where somebody, say somebody who might have shot down my best girl Verve here, might be?"

Core is quiet, probably stuttering indignantly in his mind about being perceived as an idiot, so I answer for him and save his honour.

"The vapours down here cause interference, so searching for things in it is like chipping your way through ice on top of a lake. But there's nothing to cause bad interference way up in the exosphere, so once you get past the vapours, everything is much easier – like swimming through the water beyond the ice."

"And we know exactly what we're looking for," Core adds. "While we don't really know the frequency of any nearby Guild jets, if there are any."

Duster laughs. "Well then, dame, you better stop hating on my baby girl mono – all my custom work doesn't register her as a standard-run 478 Outrider any more. You'll look more like a glitch in any other radars out there than anything else."

I curve the mono around a towering hunk of rock smoothed into an almost hourglass shape by wind and vapour storms, and begin the ascent of the orange-hued foothills. The transition from level to incline steering and turbine usage is seamless, and the high sun gleams along the chrome. I smile.

"Fine, then, Duster – I'll say it. You've done a swell job on this thing. And I had wondered how Silar hadn't been able to track you yet."

"Eh, what can I say?" Duster chuckles again. "When you gotta live in the middle of nowhere, you might as well drop off the radar altogether, hmm?"

"How the heck did you get thrown out in the Western Command Center on Rushan Island, Duster? You're a sharp one – the Fire-keeper's League would snap you up in a moment."

"Eh, I don't have, as they say, quite the right skills. I went to university for art."

"And ended up a mechanic?"

"Hey, mechanics is art, dame."

"We've got a mission here," Core breaks in. "I've picked you up on my radar now, Viridian, and if you swing about six klicks southward, you'll find that pass through the foodhills that we agreed on"

I adjust my direction accordingly. "Thanks, dear."

"No problem, m' love."

He may have been the one to suggest Duster join the crew, but... that doesn't necessarily mean he's happy about the arrangement. 

We don't talk any more as I skim up the progressively steeper sides of the foothills, swirling the dust and loose scree beneath me with the force of the mono's propulsion turbine. The pass Core found shows up on my visor map, and the silver thread of a road runs from the southwest on to the other side of the range and just south of Griswold. This is both a good thing, and a potentially dangerous one. A road means transportation.

Fifteen minutes later, the mono growls over a final rise and the road appears in front of me. Like all roads, it's single metal line, jointed like a giant centipede to let it follow the dips and curves of the rough land, and it gleams white-hot against the orange and red of the rocky ground. But here and there it's dulled by vapour-storm damage. Each patch of wear weakens the electromagnetic charge that keeps the double-decker vehicles of the Imperial Transit System suspended and speeding along, but I'll take it. The only thing I'm really worried about is whether or not the road will be in use – transits this far away from the vapourizing plants will be among the first to feel the soal shortages. But, because this is one (if not the only) main road in this area of the scrublands, a notification of an incoming transit pops up on the edge of my visor.

"I've got a live one on the line, boys!"

"How far off?" Core asks.

"About forty kilometres."

"Best set yourself up phase two."

Duster laughs, the sound blending with the hiss of his soldering tools in the background. "Yeah, how are you going to explain to a transit operator how you've ended up in the middle of bloody nowhere, madam reporter?"

I can't help grinning as I bullet past a 'beware of falling rock' sign and plunge into the pass. "I'm not going to."

The pass is deep, the sides pockmarked with holes and gouges, and piles of scree collecting at the bottom that attest to many small landslides. It's likely the whole thing was created by a deep-set faultline that activated long ago in a whopping big vapour storm. Lucky for me, faultlines never go away, and the stability of things around them can never be guaranteed.

About halfway through the pass, I catch sight of an outcropping of rock about ten metres above me with a miserable-looking cactus and a few frail trees clinging to it. Excellent.

I disengage the cruise control and pull the mono up. As soon as the wind of speed dies and the thrill of combustion calms in the engine beneath me, I'm aware of the sun pounding down on my vapour suit and the grit flecked all over my visor. My body feels gravity again, that slow, heavy, tie to the ground.

The only bad thing about a good ride is when it ends.

"What are you doing, dame?" Duster bursts out over the link. "You stopping in the middle of that pass? You cock-eyed or something? Eh? I bet you twenty to one there won't be room enough there for both you and that transit to roll along, and I ain't gonna allow my baby girl to be risked against those odds!"

"Cool your jets, sweetheart, I'm not staying." I get myself comfortable on the seat again then engage the hover turbines.

The mono purrs as I pull her higher, and then levels out again when I reach the top of the pass. I cruise her between two large boulders about twenty metres from the pass edge, then let her land and kill the ignition.

"What are you doing?" Duster's voice hits the falsely calm tone my mama's did when my pops first let me ride his hoverwheel.

I swing my leg over the mono seat to dismount, then pull my purse and the tarp out of the boot. The purse I set beside one of the boulders. The tarp I fling over the mono and clamp down to the ground with fist-sized gravity-siphoners. Two of them I tuck in my pocket where, deactivated, they're hardly more noticeable, weight-wise, than a couple of eggs. Then I sling my purse over my shoulder, where the dolled-up-ness of it clashes terribly with my thick vapour suit, and stride back over to the pass edge. Shielding my eyes from the sun-glare, I glimpse the metallic glitter of the incoming transit about fifteen kilometres off.

"Ever heard of a park and ride, Duster?"

Then I climb down the pass side, heels dug in to keep me from sliding all the way down with the scree I disrupt, and sit myself down in my impromptu transit station, right next to that miserable cactus, and wait.

I have to admit, I'm nervous.

It's been a while since I last threw myself onto a moving vehicle.