"Anyone feel like taking a hike back to the slot canyons?" Teres sang, as they passed the Amphitheater. Lio grinned as the rest of the crew pelted her with dirt, and then glanced at Ravi. The com grimaced, like he always did when anyone made jokes about last week's event. But perhaps it wasn't the flooding that bothered him so much as the memory of the shelter.

He ought to graciously admit defeat and stop paying quite so much attention to Ravi. After what Ravi explained about his past, it was clear that he was not interested in casually breaking the rules for any repeats of their night together. Which was fine. On the rare occasion where Lio had allowed himself to develop some attachment to any of his nighttime companions, it always ended in a snarl of hurt feelings, or worse, the gradual realization that his family's status was a bigger draw than anything else he had to offer. He had no desire to experience any of that mess with Ravi. Yet it was devastatingly difficult trying not to notice the way Ravi's uniform hugged his waist, or the way his dark eyes swept over each person in the crew, assessing and vigilant. Or the way the muscles in his shoulders rippled beneath the tug of the ungainly cart behind him.

The cart in question thudded into Lio's elbow. In his quest to get a better view of some of his other favorite Ravi-features, he was about to be run over. He dashed forward again, cursing Yorune for making them haul this contraption.

They planned to hike further east than he'd ever gone, on their way to a famed lake somewhere on the opposite slope of the mountain. Ravi had explained that Yorune was taking point on this operation, since she'd found the commendation. No one besides Yorune seemed to fully understand what they were supposed to do, but apparently it involved lugging some giant, yellow, plastic cone-thing she'd spent the past week building, along with coils of flexible tubing and a smattering of other supplies. A damn heavy smattering.

"Need a break?" Teres asked, falling in beside him and nodding at the cart-rope he had looped around his waist. Lio had only just begun his second turn pulling the cart, but he already wanted to give up and roll back down the mountain. But he'd promised Ravi he would do his fair share. This was his team.

"I'm alright. Could do with a distraction, though," he said. A distraction from his other distraction, their distractingly glorious command officer.

"Perfect." Aziri materialized at Teres shoulder, prancing along like a stupid mountain goat, free from the shackles of the cart. "I've been meaning to talk to you. You remember the text Yorune picked up for me?"

Lio looked up from his plodding, eyes widening. "Did you translate it?"

"I made an attempt. It's some sort of Vashyan, and they've got fourteen thousand dialects, everybody and their mother seems to have invented their own way of saying—"

"What's the text about?" Teres asked, bulldozing the tangent. Wise, considering Aziri's tendency to ramble for hours about linguistics.

"Lio asked me to see if I could get us any evidence of Mastali activity in the Vashyan dominion. The trouble with that is finding real accounts rather than the propaganda the Vashyans made up. But I think we've got one."

"And what does it say?" Lio asked.

Teres broke in again. "It says," she began, and deepened her voice to a prophetic note. "Lioooo, you are destined for greatness, if only you'll stop looking like you want to suck Com Endessen's—"

"I will kick you down this mountain, Teres."

"Go ahead and try it."

She was twice as fast as he was, and he had a better chance of twisting his own ankle than giving her the slightest trouble. But he had other tricks up his sleeve. He narrowed his eyes at her. "Then I'll hide that locator wand somewhere in your room where you can't find it."

"Don't you dare, fuckbrain."

The locator wand he'd purchased had not unearthed any artifacts. Instead, it turned out to be a very expensive dud. It went off at all hours, beeping at virtually everything in his room. At least he could wave it around as a highly annoying threat to the rest of the crew.

"Lio." Aziri glared at him. "You can't suck the com's anything. You'll screw it all up, and we need him around. We actually have a decent leader, for once."

"I'm not going to screw anything up!" He was never going to tell them the colossal mess he'd already made. It was fixed. He was fixing it. "Why do you assume I would screw it up?"

"Can we get back to the important work, here? I was up half the night translating."

Lio leaned into the ropes. "Go on."

"It refers to visitors, probably the Mastali, and describes them in a number of unusual ways. They were called 'storm bringers, ground shakers, cloud chasers, and rain trackers.' All very poetic, but ominous."

"All of those could be references to the effects of their lightships," Lio said. "Although 'ground shakers' is new. I haven't seen that in any of our descriptions."

"I thought that too. But the rest of the text doesn't mention lightships anywhere as far as I can tell. It's all about this ground shaking they supposedly did."

"Fascinating," Lio said, brow furrowed. It didn't match anything he'd read about the Mastali. They possessed all sorts of powerful tech, but the legends focused on their lightships.

Ahead of them, Yorune stopped and lifted a small hand. "Switch!" she shouted, and he gladly handed over the rope to Teres. Amid the shuffle, he pulled Aziri further away from Ravi and resumed walking with him.

"Az," he said, "Just...one quick thing. When you said I'd screw it up if I...did anything with the com, what did you mean?"

Aziri snorted. "We are all very aware of your ability to find the man who represents the biggest challenge, seduce the pants off him, and then leave him like rubble in your tracks, Alior. Don't do it to our fucking com." He laughed, and then launched into more analysis of the Vashyan text.

Lio tried to focus on Aziri's hypotheses, but another persistent thought nipped at him. It was true, his friends had seen him flirt, and goddesses knew they'd heard his stories of sneaking out of one bed or another. But he hadn't done that with Ravi. He'd stayed. And intended to see him again, even. They might have been at the start of something different.

When they crossed through a wide, smooth pass, he saw the lake where Yorune was leading them. It was larger than he expected, big enough that waves undulated across its dark surface. From this distance, it looked slick as oil, except for where it was bright, poisonous green.

"That doesn't look good." Rosareen said what everyone had to be thinking. Lio, hitched once again to the cart like a damned draft horse, nodded.

"Don't worry," Yorune said. "It's only featherweed. Highly invasive and terrible for the lake, but no threat to us. Welcome, by the way! Welcome to Wrath's Mirror!"

"I feel most reassured by that name," Lio said under his breath. Teres elbowed him, but apprehension wrinkled her face too. There was a reason the Wrath Goddess did not invite much worship, and if this was one of her places, they were better off leaving it alone. At the very least, it was bad luck for their chances of securing a second commendation.

Yorune took them down to where a ramshackle boathouse crouched on the banks. Beside it stood a massive grey dumpster. There were no instructions in sight, and Lio looked instinctively to Ravi.

Ravi was watching Yorune spin in a slow circle. "There's a contact who's supposed to meet us, right?" he asked.

"Yes!" Yorune poked at her ancient holowatch. "Let me just missive to let him know we're—"

"You're late," barked a gruff voice. An old man stumped around the corner of the boathouse, mopping his bald pate. "Come over here, let's get started." He waved them up next to the dumpster.

With the crew gathered, the old man spoke. The words were stale, as if the same speech were delivered too often. "The Eastern Oasis Company and the Fennec Region eco-corps are pleased to sponsor this commendation to units of all branches." The man droned something about a rare opportunity with the Eastern Oasis. Lio was half-curious until he realized he was reciting an advert for a fertilizer company.

"Your task is simple. To earn the commendation, you must fill the dumpster"—the man banged the side of it—"completely with featherweed. No water. No rocks. No sticks. No mud. Featherweed. Nothing but featherweed."

"I'm sorry, what goes in the dumpster?" Aziri murmured, too quietly for the man to hear. Lio snickered, and Ravi shot Aziri a disapproving look. He couldn't help but notice that Ravi didn't look at him at all.

"Your supplies are in the boathouse. I'll be in my hov, waiting for you ninnies to decide you've had enough. Missive me when you're done. And if you need anything or run into a problem, figure it out yourselves." He slapped the dumpster once more and shouldered his way past Duhar and Jossen to amble out of sight. Yorune twisted her hands together, squeezing them as she always did when she was nervous.

"What a welcome," Rosareen said. She sidled a little closer to Yorune and slung an arm over her shoulders. The crew looked to Yorune, waiting, but Lio could see nervousness turning to panic in her flickering gaze. She did not like being the authority, especially not when it meant pushing people to do something unpleasant.

"To the boathouse!" Lio trumpeted, flinging his arm up in the pathetic structure's direction. His friends did not exactly charge, but they slogged along the muddy embankment and filed in the gash in the wood that functioned as an entrance.

Inside, moldy, muggy lake air washed over him. The boat house was built partially over the water, with a long dock running through its center. There was enough room for a whole fleet, but only a rowboat and a much larger, oddly shaped floating vehicle that looked like no boat Lio had ever seen were lashed to the dock. The crew crowded closer to the strange boat, and Orvaska peeled the tarp back to reveal a simple, old-gen nav board and a plastic seat balanced between two long, slender hulls.

"Ah," said Duhar. "It's a skimmer. Looks like an old Swordfish, but without any cool gadgets."

Lio scanned it with his holowatch, and the imager flared a read-out. Class 7A Swordfish, an out of date hydroskimmer once commissioned by coastal Enforcer units. He spun toward Duhar. "How did you know that?"

Duhar shrugged. "They're one of the vehicles you can choose in the Xtreme Seven Surfaces Classic Relay vid. Pretty fast, too."

"Can you drive it? In real life, I mean, not one of the video games?" Yorune asked.

"As long as the nav console is similar, I bet I could figure it out." He grinned and laced his fingers together, cracking his knuckles.

"While Duhar plays around on a boat, what are the rest of us doing?" Jossen asked. Lio rolled his eyes. Trust Jossen to be rude and negative at every opportunity. Aziri let out a very loud, very fake cough, and then stared at Jossen intently. The subal shuffled his feet. "What I meant was, how, er, how will the rest of the team be, uh, participating?"

"Good question, Subal," Ravi said, with an encouraging smile. "That's up to Yorune."

Yorune dragged in an audible breath, and then pointed back to one of the boathouse walls. "First, we need everyone to get into waders."

Lio followed her, linking arms with Aziri. "What was that with Jossen?"

"I'm coaching him. Com Endessen told me to help him be more positive."

"You're instructing someone on how to be more positive?"

"Shut it, Lio."

Still giggling, he joined the rest of the crew in trying to find the right sized waders. A few minutes later, he waddled around in the most unattractive outfit he'd ever worn, a pair of rubbery overalls and huge, mud-crusted boots. Deeply unfair that Ravi somehow looked stern and rugged in his own pair. Lio practiced toddling up and down the dock, until an appalled noise from Orvaska brought him back to the group.

"These are the tools?" Orvaska picked up a little plastic net, waving it uncertainly. "We will not fill the dumpster with these."

"Well, shit," said Teres. "Maybe we can link a bunch of them together to make a bigger net?"

Jossen counted the nets. "We should form a line from the lake to the dumpster."

"That will waste time," Orvaska said. "And we will lose featherweed with each pass."

"Well, what's your solution then, recruit?" Jossen bristled.

"There're shovels over there." Rosareen pointed to another corner. "Maybe we can—"

"We can't shovel featherweed out of the water."

Lio jumped when Ravi clapped his hands together. The sound was amplified in the boathouse and smothered the growing argument. Their com was the only one who looked unperturbed.

"Yorune already has a plan for this," Ravi said. "We do what she tells us." He nodded to Yorune, standing next to him in a pair of much-too-large waders.

"Yes." Yorune offered a sickly smile. "Alright. So. Orvaska, you're right about the nets not being enough. It's why the other units that have tried for this commendation have all failed, even though it's a simple task."

Orvaska's eyebrows shot up, and Lio hid his own wince. By the sound of the grumbling around him, he wasn't the only one wondering if they'd wasted a hike over the mountains. But Yorune continued, "I've built a device that should help us collect the featherweed. If it works properly...we can hook it up to the skimmer and tow it around the lake. It's a cyclone extractor, so it'll draw the water and featherweed in a rapid vortex, centrifugal force in the cone will separate the solid featherweed from the water, and then the tubing pumps the featherweed out one direction and the water out the other."

Lio had no idea what she'd just explained. He smiled and nodded at Yorune while Duhar bobbled his head enthusiastically beside him. Likely just happy at the thought of driving around on the skimmer.

Onfenka broke the uncertain silence. "I cannot see it."

"Okay," Yorune said slowly. "Let's...let's go outside. I'll be able to show you better."

Lio squished after her, toward the cart with its incomprehensible tangle of materials. He knew absolutely nothing about this kind of project, so he hung back while Rosareen and Onfenka peered over Yorune's shoulder, watching her sketch something in the dirt. If it also meant he got to stand beside Ravi, while the rest of the crew paid no attention, that was a coincidence. Just his luck that Jossen bumbled over and interrupted the quiet moment he and Ravi were not sharing.

"Com," Jossen muttered, "You know that Yorune's hare-brained schemes don't usually get finished, yeah?"

"She's never had the team help her, has she?" Ravi asked.

Jossen gave an uncomfortable shrug. "Suppose not."

"Alright then," Ravi said, as if that settled something. Lio watched him curiously, but Ravi did such a meticulous job of not looking at him, it had to be intentional. And when he finally stopped examining the com's profile, he spotted Teres grinning at him, her hands on her hips.

Onfenka stooped closer to the ground, tilting her head. "This goes there? With these attached? The tubing will not stretch to the dumpster, then. We will need another place— She pointed at something in Yorune's drawing, while Yorune nodded. "Okay. Okay." Onfenka stepped back. "Orvaska! Bring a shovel. You will dig. The others?" Lio had never heard her string quite so many words together.

Yorune straightened and bounced twice on her toes, her eyes bright. "Duhar, get that Swordfish on the water. Aziri, start laying out the tubing on the banks and Rosa and Onfenka will attach it to the extractor. The rest of you can help dig a containment basin." She grinned wildly and twirled, her puff bouncing. "Hop to it, my bunnies!"