by Luke Norris
There was actually mirth in her tone as if this was another one of Oliver’s pranks. Eorol knew the King Oliver story, he knew the tales going around at the space program. If Shael needed this final closure, he would not rob her of it. He followed her silently and pulled himself up into the cockpit and fired the turbines.
*
Seth scanned the area of the treatment plant where his driver had indicated. Nothing that he could see. He believed there was someone there, he just was not able to see them. Arif had alerted him to the presence of others. He trusted the driver’s heightened senses.
The driver stood in front of Seth like a loyal guard dog in front of its master. His small, deep-set, grey eyes watched the corner of the reservoir impassively. The invasive steel plates running from Arif's temple, around his head to the back of his neck, went unnoticed by the driver.
Seth had ordered Arif not to interfere. He was intrigued to see if his suspicions were correct. He shifted his gaze to the ship’s hatch where Medom had ordered the drivers to assemble. She was so green. It was disgusting to watch the way Medom squandered these resources.
“There! Behind the small wooden structure,” Arif pointed, guiding Seth’s gaze to the edge of the reservoir a two hundred meters away. “He waits to make his attack.” Arif’s voice was calm, like a park guide observing how the jungle cat stalks its prey.
Seth thought he caught a glint of something reflecting. Then a figure lithe and fluid, sprint out from behind the hiding place, exactly where Arif had said. He closed the distance at an unimaginable pace and then leaped, or flew, over the group of drivers directly in front of the hatch. Yes, yes. Seth willed him on, he wanted to see what this man was capable of. There could be no doubt, this was a driver. The way he moved, the instinctual roll as he landed. But this driver was boosting. Seth felt aroused. New realms of driver evolution. He even wondered if Arif, with his augmentations, would be a match for this rogue driver.
He watched the platoons of drivers swarm in the hatchway after the man. Medom had called them all in to protect her. Foolish. They can’t all operate in that small space effectively. She was an embarrassment. But it didn’t surprise him. None of the crew were adequately endowed with the intelligence for this work like he was.
Seth took a step towards the scene when Arif put his hand up. “There is another,” the driver said.
Another? Another one of these rogue drivers? A primitive aircraft rose up from behind the second reservoir and flew in front of Seth’s landing craft. It went completely unchecked. Why were the drivers not engaging it? Medom, he realized. She’s panicked and ordered all drivers help her. They won’t go against such direct orders.
Fire exploded from the rear of the aircraft, as some sort of archaic missile torpedoed into the ship, exploding and engulfing everything in flames.
Medom would be dead, and the strange driver would be dead. Yes, he was a driver, the kind of martyrdom that Seth just witnessed was the final confirmation that the man was a driver. No second-stage early-trader would act in such a selfless, brave way.
All the drivers down there incinerated. That was aggravating because it was down to Medom’s mismanagement. The only upside to this mess was at least he wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore and by association her incompetence.
The first-stage aircraft eventually left the scene. Seth needed to ponder this. Where had that driver come from? The man was a driver, that much he was sure of. The tactics and movements were like a familiar language to Seth. But the man’s autonomous behavior was an intriguing mystery. Where were his masters?
Seth summoned a second landing craft to pick them up. Why should he have to deal with the mess that Medom’s incompetence had created? Now he would have to explain to Li why blanketing had not begun. What’s more, she’d wasted twenty perfectly good drivers too. I will have to replenish those numbers, and that will take time. The thought irked him. Seth didn’t just choose any candidates like other crews. No! His selection process was painstaking and deliberate, scrupulous filtering to find the best first-stage specimens. Medom had just caused twenty of them to be incinerated. It was fitting that she had burnt with them.
Seth wove his way slowly back through the treatment plant, close on the heels of Arif. The driver was in a state of constant vigil, continuously stopping and scanning, his honed instincts far keener the Seth's own. After making their way through the labyrinth-like facility, the driver stopped them again.
“The wasp is returning,” he said.
Seth listened. Yes, he heard it. Gradually, the obnoxious sound of first-stage aircraft turbines came within hearing range. They were much closer to the wreckage now, and crouched down behind an administration building, and watched through a window with a clear line of sight. A few moments later the camouflaged aircraft came into view, maneuvering ponderously in the air and setting down heavily on the landing skiffs in front of the burnt out ship. A man and young woman jumped out. Arif made to get up.
“We observe!” Seth ordered. “Do not be seen.”
Arif checked himself instantly and dropped back to become inconspicuous. Seth needed to learn who these people were, and Arif’s methods would not bring answers. As he watched, the man and woman wrapped cloth around their faces to block out the fumes. The overpowering odor from the remnants of the chemical fire was strong even where Seth and Arif watched. Small fires still burnt on patches of blackened grass and wooden structures nearby. A glowing orange line of embers marked the border between unscathed and charred grass, indicating how far the blast radius reached.
They walked cautiously towards the hatch of the ship then disappeared inside.
“Arif put this in their aircraft.” Seth handed the driver a small spherical tracking drone that fit easily in the palm of his hand. “Don’t engage. Stay invisible, and don’t be seen!”
Arif took the device and dashed under cover of the building in the direction of the ship.
*
Shaels eyes stung from the fumes and smoke. She pulled the scarf tighter around her mouth and nose, and squinted her eyes. The lowered hatch acted as an access ramp, and she stepped up to the black entrance. The ship’s fuselage, apart from being blackened by the fire, didn’t appear to have sustained any damage from the aggressive blast. Ungainly looking heaps lay on the ground, after a few moments of confusion, she was horrified to recognize a rib cage. It was hundreds of blackened bones amidst the embers. Jutting out from the ash like a petrified forest. She tasted bitter bile rising in the back of her throat. Eorol gave her a sympathetic I told you so glance.
Her boots crunched on the ground as she stepped inside, it was impossible to avoid remains. The brittle charcoaled bones cracked and crumbled underfoot.
“Sweet Verity!” she exclaimed. “Oliver was in here?”
“He was in here when the rocket hit, Shael,” Eorol sifted the ash piles around with his leather boots as if searching for something recognizable. “He was being mauled to death by twenty soldiers,” he added. They walked through the entire cabin, it was all the same grizzly scene.
Her heart was beating fast in her chest, and her legs felt rubbery. She placed a hand on the black surface beside her for support. Her hand slipped on the smooth glass smearing the black soot and leaving a clear streak with her hand. It was a window. These smooth cocoon-like shapes were capsules.
Eorol noticed this also, and wiped the one next to him and peered through the smeared glass curiously. He froze. “Sweet Verity!” he whispered, and then frantically began wiping more of the window clean “Shael, get over here!”
She almost tripped as she hurried over to the capsule. Oh please let it be… She helped Eorol wipe the window. Eorol stood back in wonder as the face came into view. Unburnt and alive. “I don’t believe it…”
“Oliver!” Shael screamed through the glass. His eyes were closed, and he was slumped down. “He’s bleeding heavily. Help me here, Eorol.”
She desperately searched the seam of the capsule for a way
to open it and get to him. The capsule had completely insulated him from the blast, but he was in a very bad way.
Shael rubbed the area around the pod to see if there was any clue to getting Oliver free. Every part of her clothing had been blackened, and she let out an involuntary weep of frustration as her sleeve just smearing the soot around. Eorol pushed her gently aside and wiped the wall. A control panel revealed itself. Shael instantly started hitting buttons at random. She couldn’t clearly see through misty tears.
“Open damn you.”
A hiss made them both jump, and the pod glass slid open. Oliver’s face was drained of color, and his lips had the hint of blue, like that of a hypothermic patient. Shael knelt down and put her face close to his. Yes, she felt the lightest breath against her cheek.
“He’s still breathing,” she said, sliding Oliver’s arm across Eorol. “We need to get him to the doctor right now.”
They managed to laboriously carry his limp, heavy, body between them to the wasp. It required several rests laying Oliver on the scorched grass while they caught their breath. Shael stayed in the back of the wasp as Eorol took off. She tore strips off Oliver’s clothing to use as field bandages and did her best to stem the bleeding.
Oliver mumbled feverish incoherent words, inaudible they were spoken so softly. There was nothing more that she could do. Shael lay on the steel floor beside him. She would keep him alive through share force of will if she had to. She placed her hand gently on his chest and could feel the feeble rise and fall of his shallow breathing.
She ran her hand over the familiar scars. Now he would have new ones. Once again, Oliver had been the only thing between them and these second-stage monsters he had told her about. He’d been prepared to give everything to protect them, everything!
He’d somehow succeeded in thwarting their attempts to drug the population, even if only temporarily. She realized now the hopelessness he’d felt. If Oliver, the very best defense they had to offer, almost died during a mere skirmish what hope was there for her world?
Oliver shuddered and mumbled something in his delirium. She pushed her face close to his. He smelt of smoke and blood and sacrifice. Fate had cruelly placed an impossible burden on him, more than ever now Shael realized just how impossible.
He will be a martyr, the horrible realization dawned as she felt the shallow breathing of her lover, maybe not this time, but he will be. Yet, he had to do it, there were simply too many lives to think about the sacrifice of one man. Oliver already knew it, he’d already accepted it. The strange moods he’d gone through made more sense to her now. It was her that hadn’t come to terms with it. She wanted to scream at the universe for doing this to her Oliver. It was terrible and unjust and heartless, but Oliver was right, and now she understood. Her fantasies of traveling with Oliver to other worlds, uncovering the origins of humankind seemed like a child’s silly fantasy.
“Not yet, Oliver,” she whispered in his ear. “Laitam needs you. You still have something left. Think of Lego.” She used the name of the man Oliver admired and had told her about on many occasions. The person he drew strength from, through his example of fighting even when he had no more body to fight with. But it wasn’t just everyone else that needed him… “I still need you.”
She continued whispering to him as the wasp sped northwards in the direction of the black mountains.
29
TERROM
Oliver woke with a sense of déjavu. A leg infection half a millennia ago. Now, experiencing a similar debilitating affliction, it brought the ancient memory to vivid clarity. He could even remember the voice of captain Yarn in the next room of the small candlelit stone highland dwelling.
This time the fever broke quickly, for that he could thank the nanites imbued in his body. The doctor seemed utterly bewildered that in two days Oliver was not only lucid, but his mind was quick and sharp as a highland spear. The knife wounds, although healing quickly, were severe and still incapacitating. The laceration below his ribs had missed vital organs, but the deep cut in his arm had severed tendons in his hand, and the doctor had told him his ha nd would never work again. He would still have mobility in his forearm, but his fingers were permanently crippled.
Oliver overheard the doctor talking with Shael, expressing his concern over Oliver’s seeming disinterest, even blasé attitude toward the news. The doctor didn’t understand that it didn’t matter. None of it really mattered. They would either take Oliver piece by piece slowly or in one go and it’d be quick. It was just a matter of time.
After the encounter at the water treatment plant, something deep in Shael had changed. She still had the vibrant energy and spirit he had fallen in love with, but there were new depths to her. Oliver felt a new strength, and in her eyes he could see the pain of what shedding the naivety had cost. Her large highland-hazel eyes had lost the girlish innocent sheen of cubhood and been replaced by the experience and lethal beauty of the lioness.
Shael understood. Truly understood, that it would ultimately cost them everything. How had she emerged from the transformation with such determination and dignity? Oliver’s heart swelled, and he found the extent of his love for her was unfettered. The knowledge of just how finite and limited time was for them brought new depths to their passion, it was more desperate, more urgent. Afterward, they lay together under white sheets, nuzzling each other tenderly like kittens in a litter.
Shael ran her fingers over the cooling moisture on Oliver’s body, causing goosebumps to form on his chest, and their hands lazily intertwined. He could feel Shael’s hot breath on his neck as her lips parted playfully and insistently against the skin. He feigned sleeping as long as he could before his own arousal betrayed him, and a smile crept up on his face. Shael laughed with delight at having foiled his subterfuge and seeing his appetite for her had not been satiated.
Oliver was woken out of a deep slumber by the sounds of men yelling. It was coming from the airfield warehouses down near the canal. The men were probably transporting one of the larger fuselage components of the rocket to the launch site, the procedure was always fraught with difficulty.
Shael’s deep even breathing beside him as she slept lulled him back to the pillow. What time was it? The light in the room told him it was afternoon. He had taken some liberties to allow his injury to recover. He looked at Shael’s silky dark highland hair splayed across her pale cheeks and the pillow. Well, maybe it wasn’t just the injury.
More yelling caused Oliver to open his eyes again. He went to rub his eyes and was reminded of the useless hand. It was the many routine motions and habits, now muscle memory, that was a constant reminder.
There had apparently been strange sightings on the grounds during the week Oliver had been away. There had been a great deal of commotion among the engineers upon his return, they had excitedly reported how hundreds of wonderful and strange flying, or floating, devices had spent two days flying all around every corner of the premises, before disappearing again.
The engineers, being conscientious scientists, had been cautious and wary in the way they’d observed the phenomenon. Others, not so much. Oliver was saddened to hear one of the local fishermen, who supplied their community, had attempted to knock a drone down out of the sky, and it had killed him. The blast of energy had cauterized the wound itself, leaving only blackened skin.
The flying machines were not wonderful and strange, they were drones, wards of the enemy, tools of the second-stagers. The drones were looking for me, Oliver thought. Trying to locate the man who kidnapped one of their own. Had he been here, who knows what sort of retribution it would have brought down on him and the community of scientists and their families. Luckily they’d left without finding either him or Terrom, who was locked away under close watch.
Again yelling, but this time closer to the residence buildings. That voice… Oliver’s extra sense screamed. That was the second-stage language, he sat bolt upright and scrambled out from the tangle of blankets.
“O
liver?” Shael asked startled. “What is it?”
He ripped open the curtain and scanned the well-kept grounds of the residence, to where the commotion was happening. There, near the first hanger, five or six men trying to subdue a man who was wearing no shirt. His upper body was pale and amorphous, but occasionally moving in a blur. The telltale sign of somebody boosting. As Oliver watched, one of the guards went down and didn’t rise.
“Ah damn,” Oliver said, tripping on his pants as he rushed to get them on with his good hand. “Terrom’s escaped. He’s taking apart the men out there.”
“Oliver wait!” Shael protested. “Your arm.”
“He’s boosting, Shael,” Oliver explained as he ambled out the door as fast as he could. His ribs were smarting like nothing else, and the stitches tugged at the skin. But those guards! He had told the men to make sure he did not leave the room. How had this happened? He hurried across the lawns at as close to a run as he could muster.
The second stager’s behavior was bizarre, as though he were attempted to hail someone, and the guards were merely a distraction, a hindrance. That was more disquieting than the fact he was drawing spectators and sowing discord among the engineers, many of whom didn’t even know about his presence on the grounds.
As Oliver drew closer, he straightened up and tried his best to conceal the extent of his injuries. He had this one bluff. He could not stand against Terrom in hand to hand combat in his current state. He wanted to avoid shooting the man in front of all the onlookers too if he could avoid it.
Terrom avoided the blows of another guard and delivered a retaliation strike with such force that Oliver heard the crack of the radius bone in the guard's forearm from where he was across the grounds. The guards won’t shoot, Oliver realized. I gave them strict instruction, and it’s going to get them killed. The guard screamed out and pulled back holding his arm.
