The air-car jolted, dropping suddenly. M'kar thought
about trying to crawl across the deck and reaching Ke’Jor before they crashed. If
they were going to die, she wanted to hit him as hard as she could, first, as
many times as she could.
The air-car jolted. She grunted. Ke’Jor cursed. The
bouncing as they plummeted downward broke his curses into fragments and
threatened to slam her into the roof. Shrieking alarms filled the air,
deafening. Through the wail of the engine and the blatts and squeals of the
alarms, the wind’s howl grew stronger, and soon drowned them out.
"Alert," a mechanical voice said, while
the alarms silenced for a few seconds. "Approaching Etrusca's Wall. Change
course. Continuing on this course violates a blood edict of the Council of Clans."
"What does that mean?" Ke’Jor shouted,
as the voice repeated the message.
How could he not know? Etrusca's Wall was the surbda crater on the dividing line between Ba'e'do'stra and Rissor clan lands. Didn't they teach them anything in the Rissor Clan?
This was the largest surbda crater, with a wall of rubble ten meters high surrounding it. Legends said the warrior Etrusca had pulled it up from the netherworld during one of her many resurrections from the dead. Navigation equipment and sensors refused to work within ten meters of most surbda craters, but that trouble zone reached fifty meters out from Etrusca's Wall. All transportation equipment refused to work. Animals refused to go into it. There were nine total surbda craters, scattered across the planet. All were forbidden, by ritual and common sense. All equipment, whether transportation, probes or drones vanished once they crossed into a crater.
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