Chapter 429: Ten Thousand Credits

The checklist took Jin three evenings, and he was embarrassed by how much of it said don’t know.

Navigation without Flicker: don’t know. Feed for six weeks: can’t carry it, don’t know the alternative. Repairs to the spear binding in the field: have never done it.

Beside Glitch’s condition, he’d written recovering and underlined it twice, as if that would make it go faster.

Glitch was out of the monitoring bay, but Verrick’s rule still held. Nothing heavy. Short walks round the stable yard, twice a day, at whatever pace Glitch chose.

The pace Glitch chose was slow. He walked like someone who’d been ill and didn’t fully trust his own legs yet. He took the corner by the water trough wide and careful, and leaned away from his right side when he lay down.

Flicker’s wing came out of its wrap on Saturday. She flew one length of the stable block, landed on the roof, and sat there looking offended that nobody had applauded.

Jin’s arm faded from green to yellow to almost nothing. He kept his cultivation slow and brief, and slept more than he had in months.

The follow-up was on Thursday, in Crowe’s office, with Halloran sitting in.

Crowe read Jin’s checklist first. Then Lucian’s. Then he put them side by side and tapped the two pages.

"Good," he said. "You both wrote don’t know a lot."

"That’s good?" Lucian asked.

"It’s honest. The ones who come back with everything ticked are the ones I worry about." He slid an envelope across the desk to each of them. "Transport is arranged. Essential supplies come from the field office, standard issue: shelter, first aid, emergency rations, the basics. On top of that, each of you gets this."

[Expedition Equipment Allowance — 10,000 Credits]

[Restricted: approved equipment and beast-care supplies only.]

"It’s not a prize," Halloran said. "It doesn’t cover anything you want. It covers things you’ll need. The store has a list of what’s approved. Spend it on what your checklist says you’re missing."

Jin looked at the number. Once, ten thousand Credits would have changed the shape of his family’s year.

He had never been given so much specifically to spend on keeping himself alive. He folded the allowance sheet carefully.

Crowe turned the checklists face down and pushed a map extract to each of them.

It showed unfamiliar country: a river, two ridges and a cross marked you.

"You’ve lost your beasts’ view," Crowe said. "Your partner isn’t there. It’s getting dark, and you’ve got water for one day. Ten minutes. Tell me where you go."

They did it in silence, at opposite ends of the desk.

At the end, Crowe looked at both sheets.

"Astor. You went for the ridge so you could see."

"Yes."

"What tells you that slope is passable before dark?" Crowe tapped the tightly crowded contour lines. Jin looked again. He hadn’t checked. Crowe turned to Lucian. "Vale. You followed the river for eleven kilometers. Where do you stop for the night?"

Lucian looked down at his unbroken pencil line. "I hadn’t chosen."

"Choose before you’re too tired to do it properly." Crowe pushed the papers back. "You can fight. That won’t tell you whether there’s enough daylight to reach shelter."

Outside, Lucian stopped beneath the corridor light and unfolded the map again. Jin waited beside him. They found two possible stopping places before going down to the store.

The expedition store was in the basement of the field office. It was full of things Jin had never needed before, laid out on long tables under hard light.

He’d thought he’d buy the best of everything. The first thing he picked up was a water filter, light and beautifully made, with a price tag of three thousand two hundred Credits. The man behind the counter looked at it and then at Jin.

"Cartridges are proprietary," he said. "When it clogs out there, and it will, you’d better have a spare. They’re three hundred each. And they don’t make them anywhere you’re going."

Jin put it back.

He took a heavier, plainer filter instead. It was ugly. It weighed nearly twice as much. Its cartridge could be cleaned in the field, and approved replacement media came in small packets. The clerk showed him the water-treatment instructions and packed the recommended tablets beside it.

At least I can service it myself.

Navigation came next. He’d been ready to spend thousands on a sealed survey slate with a long battery, until he read the field office’s own note on the margin maps.

There was no complete interior map. The expensive slate would show him the same surveyed margins as his phone.

So he bought a good compass, a cheap waterproof case for his phone with the offline survey extract loaded, a pad of waterproof paper and two pencils.

Lucian tested another compass beside his, checking that he could read it comfortably in poor light.

Repair supplies were simple, and that surprised him. Waxed thread, an awl, spare binding cord for the spear, a small tube of resin, strap buckles. The spear itself would go in with its real head refitted.

He would have to check the fitting before they left.

The beast care cost the most.

Glitch ate like a work crew. Jin couldn’t carry six weeks of feed, and Glitch was still recovering. He told the clerk both things before they chose anything.

The clerk weighed a compact feed allocation against Jin’s carrying limit, leaving room for the rest of his kit. It would supplement suitable local food, not replace six weeks of meals. The field office supplied a short list of compatible species tested by the margin teams.

Tested, Halloran had said. Not "looks fine". Tested.

He bought the bricks, which were dense, heavy and smelt faintly of fish and iron. He bought a wound kit for Glitch’s plates and the softer skin between them.

For Flicker, he bought wing tape and salve, and a small sealed tub of the pellets she liked.

He checked that the pellets were suitable travel feed before adding them. Having something familiar for her first days seemed worth the space.

For himself, there were sealing bags, a small drying screen, and a page of the counter man’s advice on the waterproof paper.

At the till, the total came to nine thousand nine hundred and forty. An approved spare filter-media packet used the remaining sixty.

[Expedition Equipment Allowance — 10,000 / 10,000 Credits used]

That night, he opened the Engine to review his supplies.

[Lives: 5]

[Stored: mineral nodules ×4. Emberheart Resin ×1. Scutes ×4. Seepstone Clusters ×4. Ironhorn segment ×1. Hide sections ×2.]

The family earmark was still 240,000 Coins. He closed the inventory without spending anything; the physical supplies spread across his bed needed sorting first.

Verrick cleared Glitch for gradual activity the following morning.

"Ten minutes," he said. "Easy ground. Then twenty, two days later, if he’s comfortable. Then we’ll see."

The first session was ten minutes of walking and trotting in Yard Three. Glitch did it carefully, testing each stride.

By Tuesday, Verrick permitted a little resistance work with an unloaded sled. Jin brought it round slowly. Glitch leaned against it, then pushed.

The sled slid back a meter, and the drake looked at it, surprised, as if he’d forgotten he could do that.

On Wednesday, Jin noticed something. Glitch had turned the corner by the water trough tight and easy, without swinging wide, and he hadn’t even looked at the ground first.

Jin kept walking beside him, pleased enough to forget the checklist for a while. There were more checks ahead, but this corner had worried him all week.