“Exactly how long are these fuses?” she asked.
Byron pulled one out of his pack and eyed it. “About fifteen seconds, I’d say.”
“Think we can light them all at once? This has to be perfect.”
He unslung his satchel and set it down in front of himself on the maglev, slinging his legs on either side of the sled. Stacking the explosives neatly together, he practiced the action of setting them all off by leaning on them with his hands and arms.
She did the same, arranging them in a straight line inside the satchel.
Ahead of them, the two Death Riders with the spear guns lifted their weapons, readying to defend the barricade.
She pulled up a counter on her PRD. “Ready?”
“As ever,” he said, grinning way too much.
“Okay.” She positioned her hands and arms, making contact with the tops of each explosive while keeping them in the weapons bag. Byron did the same.
“Okay. Light ’em!” She pressed down just as he did. She heard the spark and hiss of the fuses igniting. They raced forward, speeding toward the barricade. The two Death Riders took aim, firing both spears. One sailed between them, but the other one glanced Byron. She saw him flinch and cry out, but he kept going. They sailed over the Death Riders’ heads and dropped the explosives onto the obstruction. The Death Riders on foot had almost caught back up to the debris pile, and they lifted their guns as they flew past.
A deafening boom erupted behind them. H124 saw Death Riders consumed in flames, flying up into the air just as a concussive wave hit her maglev. The copters whirred into high RPMs and began plunging down toward the ground.
To her left, Byron’s sled went out of control. He crashed to the ground hard, and she could see now where the spear had torn through his thigh, his pants ragged and bloody. He stumbled to his feet, limping, grabbing the maglev parts and waving frantically through its controls on his PRD.
As H124’s maglev sailed past several Death Riders on foot, she kicked one in the head, grabbing his shotgun as he fell. But she went off balance. Her maglev crashed all the way to the dirt and the rotors stopped. Two Death Riders ran forward, closing in, only a hundred feet away. She struggled to restart the maglev. The copters recalibrated themselves, moving into position, and she jumped on again just as the Death Riders raised their guns. They fired as she veered off toward Byron.
As she approached him, she saw the train had once again reversed direction; it was powering toward them now. Two Death Riders approached Byron, carrying chains and closing in on him. One held a revolver, the other a blood-encrusted trident. H124 flew in over them, lowering the shotgun and blasting the man with the revolver. His head erupted in a crimson geyser, and his body slumped to the ground. The one with the trident took off, dropping the chains, and she gave pursuit, seeing that two more Death Riders were homing in, one with a flash burster and another with a chainsaw.
Behind her, Byron struggled to get his maglev functional again. He picked up one of the copters and shook it, surveying the ground for something. It had broken. He wasn’t going to be able to get airborne again. The chainsaw-wielding Death Rider was almost on top of him, and Byron took off, limping, but the one with the flash burster closed in and aimed. Chainsaw shouted at his friend, his eyes wild with delight, and raised the chainsaw over his head, ready to bring it down onto Byron.
H124 swooped low, brought the shotgun to bear, and flew past, blasting a hole through Chainsaw’s neck. She cocked the shotgun, banked around, and hit Flash Burster point blank in the chest. Blood erupted from his shirt.
Six more Death Riders approached from the east. H124 lowered the maglev, holding a hand out to Byron. He gripped it, his hand hot in hers, and swung up onto the maglev beside her. She veered around and took off for the train, hearing the loud boom of a gun to their rear. She weaved and banked wildly, trying to make a difficult target. She approached the train at a dangerous clip, but she couldn’t risk going any slower. Behind her Byron groaned, grasping his leg, blood seeping out at an alarming rate.
As the train readied to pass beneath them, she saw the roof hatch slide open. She slowed, hovering just above it. Then she lowered the maglev into the cool of the engine control booth.
Grant sealed the hatch above them.
They were almost on the area where the barricade had been. “I hope the track is intact!” he shouted as they sailed over it, gaining speed. A jarring vibration shuddered through the train as she hopped off the sled. She almost lost her footing, but Raven caught her. He then helped Byron down off the sled.
Grant picked up speed, the buggies no longer able to keep up as the train powered west. He glanced over at Byron, seeing the seeping wound. “There’s a medpod in the back. Three cars down.”
She braced her shoulder under Byron’s arm and helped him through the door, through the cars, all the way back. Despite his pain, Byron kept chuckling. As she pressed the red cross in the wall and watched the medpod emerge and lower itself, she met Byron’s eyes. He was still grinning. “Now that was fun,” he said.
She grinned back.
* * * *
Later they all ate dinner together. Dirk had emerged from the sleeping car, startled awake by the Death Rider attack, and joined them for the meal. But after he picked halfheartedly at his food, he returned to bed. H124 knew how exhausted he was, how little sleep he’d gotten lately. He was a ghost of himself.
H124 brought a plate of food up to Grant, who looked drained. “Not used to making a continuous run,” he told her. “But I don’t dare stop now.”
“We could take turns,” she offered.
He regarded her with a shriveling look that clearly expressed his firm belief in her insanity. “No one drives her except me.”
But in the end, they did all take turns, though Grant insisted on only taking very short naps propped up behind the temporary driver. During these shifts, he continually jerked awake, crying, “What was that?” even if it had been smooth sailing.
After dinner on the second day, she longed for some fresh air. She pushed the door release and stepped out onto the small platform between two cars. The hot, humid night air enveloped her. She climbed a ladder to the top of the neighboring car. Struggling to maintain her balance as the train rocketed down the tracks, she moved to the center of the roof. The wind ruffled her hair, a welcome breeze.
A sense of freedom washed over her, and a flurry of images hit her. She thought of laboring in New Atlantic, knowing only her small room and the tasks set before her each day, retrieving corpses and dragging them to the incinerator, then returning to her tiny room to do the same thing the next day.
She braced her feet, gazing out at the darkened landscape around her. She’d come so far. Her life felt so different now that she could barely grasp hold of it. The empty, aching feeling that had plagued her for as long as she could remember had now melted away. She’d found companionship, a sense of belonging, a greater purpose. For a moment her heart felt too big for her chest. She drew in a deep breath, smelling the tang of rain in the air. She was free. Her life could be anything she dreamed of. She could craft it exactly as she wanted to, her own choices guiding her. Her own conscience. Not someone else’s orders, not the rules of a rigid society she’d been born into. Out here, she was free to build whatever kind of life she wanted.
She glanced skyward, the stars above brilliant in a sea of black. She had this one task ahead of her, and though stopping the asteroid was monumental, if they succeeded, the immense freedom of her life filled her with such longing and excitement that it was almost too big to process. Pure joy. Pure relief. What adventures awaited her out here? What grand experiences?
She sat down cross-legged on the roof of the train, the rhythmic clacking of the wheels echoing into the night. She heard the car door whoosh open, and a few moments later, Raven appeared at the top of the ladder.
“Mi
nd if I join you?”
She smiled. “Not at all.”
He worked his way deftly across the top of the train and sat down next to her. The landscape was flat, lit in silver and blues by a waning crescent moon.
When she’d lived in New Atlantic, artificial lights burned constantly, beating down on the city at all hours. To see the moon, you had to scan the sky, and even then it was mostly obscured by the ubiquitous amber glow of the atmospheric shield. The garish lights outshone the moon, and she’d never known the enchanting, silver light of the earth’s natural satellite until she’d left the city behind her.
The arc of the Milky Way spanned the darkness, dense clusters of stars and dreamy nebulosity. They rode in silence for a time, and H124 couldn’t help but think of the last time they’d sat together like this beneath the stars. She’d just lost Astoria. Her mind flashed on her friend racing toward the attacking soldiers, ripping the grenade belt off her chest, then the brilliant explosion as H124 had drifted helplessly toward the ground in her flight suit, unable to help her friend. She swallowed hard and looked over at Raven. His gaze was far away, his long black hair fluttering in the wind. He sat with his knees up, arms resting on them, staring up at the stars.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
He inhaled, leaning his head back. “My parents. They would have loved a night like this. They taught me all the names of the stars and the stories behind them.” The crescent moon played silver over his face. “We’d play this stick game, tsìdìł, in the winter. I always loved that. I still have their set.”
“We should play it,” she said, then wondered if they’d see another winter. She glanced to the neighboring car holding the A14, the craft’s sleek outlines cutting a dark shape against the stars.
“Yes, we should.” He exhaled, staring off to the south.
She noticed a glow there. It had been dim at first, but now as they moved ever westward, it had grown brighter. It formed a dome of orange light to the south, no stars visible in that part of the sky. “What is that?” she asked.
“Delta City. We’re passing to the north of it.”
She thought about how far away they were from it, staggered the light was reaching them this far out.
“The light pollution there is terrible.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “You must not have seen any stars growing up in New Atlantic.”
Her mouth tightened. “Not a one. I can still remember the first time I saw them. I was so astounded I jumped out of my car and just had to stare up.”
He smiled, shifting his weight toward her. “Did you know that birds migrate using the stars?”
She lifted her eyebrows. “They do?”
“Yep. They use the north star as a reference. The megacities are bad, truly, but in the past when people lived in conditions of urban sprawl, lights blanketed the entire continent from ocean to ocean. Migratory birds got lost, crashing into buildings and dying in urban centers. It decimated their populations.” He sighed, craning his neck back to take in the expanse of the Milky Way. “If we’re ever able to bring back enough birds, I’d sure like to see them on their migrations.” He grinned, turning back to her. “One of them was this tiny little bird called a hummingbird. You can’t imagine how tiny. Like this big!” He held up his thumb for reference. “Its wings beat seventy times a second. Can you imagine? It lived primarily on nectar from flowers. And this tiny bird would migrate hundreds of miles every year. I’ve seen photos of their brilliant feathers—sapphire, emerald, scarlet. They were like little flying jewels. They’d do incredible aerobatics, rising up and then diving more than a hundred feet straight down through the air. My ancestors said they did this to see what was above the blue of the sky.”
“Have you brought any hummingbirds back?”
He pressed his hands together, pursing his lips. “No. So far we haven’t located any of their DNA. But I have hope.”
She smiled. “I know you do.” Raven had enough hope for all of them. It was infectious. She breathed in the night air, her gaze moving from the amber light dome of Delta City up to the glorious dark to the north.
Her thoughts turned to James Willoughby.
Willoughby was a powerful figure in the Public Programming Corporation, but he believed in H124’s cause and had considerable influence. He’d been helping them since her initial escape from New Atlantic, and he’d been close to getting caught.
And for H124 personally, the most surprising thing about Willoughby was that she’d just learned he was her father. She’d thought she’d never know her parents or even who they had been, so it was a welcome balm in a sea of loneliness to know that such a courageous, kind person was related to her.
But her family story had been an unhappy one. Willoughby had fallen in love with the daughter of a highly placed PPC exec, Olivia. Her daughter, Juliet, was an investigative reporter who had covered stories for one of the now-defunct PPC media streams. Juliet had stumbled upon a terrible story—that Olivia was dealing with Delta City’s overpopulation problem by harvesting people who were living out on the streets for food. Before Juliet could have broken the story, Olivia had arranged for her to die in a transport explosion. Olivia had planned to raise infant H124 herself after Willoughby transferred to New Atlantic, a move that had been in the works. She’d wanted to raise H124 to take over her empire, to be a powerful player for the PPC, an existence that would have made H124’s soul wither and die.
But Willoughby had learned of the plot and rushed to save Juliet. They’d staged an accident, faking the death of both H124 and her mother. Juliet had fled, agreeing to meet with Willoughby later at a designated place outside Delta City. But when he’d shown up there, smuggling H124 in secret, their contact had been murdered, the place burned down, and no sign of Juliet remained.
He’d never found her.
So the most anonymous way he had thought of to protect H124’s real identity was by hiding her in the New Atlantic workforce and keeping an eye on her from a distance, playing the grieving father. That way she hadn’t been fitted with a head jack and made part of the apathetic, opiated masses. And she hadn’t been a target for Olivia, either.
Before New Atlantic was destroyed by the first asteroid fragment, Willoughby had escaped to Delta City, once again resuming an executive position there. Olivia had learned that H124 was still alive, and tried to have Willoughby fired on the grounds that he was a traitor to the PPC. But it had backfired. Because Willoughby had been so careful in covering his tracks, they hadn’t found anything suspicious. It was close—he’d even packed up to flee Delta City before learning he’d been cleared. After that, the opinion of Olivia had lowered among the PPC execs, who felt that she had only put suspicion on Willoughby in order to get rid of him and gain more power.
Now H124 wondered how he was doing down there in Delta City. That glow there on the horizon marked his presence, and she felt a strange connection to him through the darkness.
“Raven?” she asked, unsure how to bring up the question she wanted to ask him. He’d been so close to his parents. Byron had, too. And they’d both lost them. She was having the opposite experience, thinking she’d never know her parents and finding out that one of them was still alive.
He turned to her, tucking his hair behind his ear. “Yes?”
“Can I ask you about your parents?”
He smiled. “Sure.”
“What was it like? Having them, I mean?”
He shifted his arms on his knees and stared off into the distance. “Having parents is like…having a home wherever you are. The best ones, like mine, love you unconditionally. You feel like you always have somewhere to go. No matter how bad things get, you have people who love you no matter what.” He looked down, shifting his feet on the metal of the train. “But when you lose them…it’s the opposite feeling, like you’ll never have a home again. There’s no one left in the world who
loves you unconditionally, or who’s known you your whole life. No one to accept you in spite of mistakes or be there for you no matter what. It’s the most desolate feeling I’ve ever felt.” He hung his head, his hair falling forward.
She brought a hand up and placed it on his shoulder. “You’ve got us now,” she said.
He lifted his head and smiled. “And you have us,” he told her, “even if you do have a new dad and all.”
She laughed. “I do, don’t I?”
“And he doesn’t seem half bad for a PPC guy.”
She stared at the far-off glow. “Nope. Not half bad at all.”
Raven shifted his weight and stood. “Well, I’m dead on my feet. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He kept his balance, navigating the top of the train, and disappeared over the ladder.
H124 continued to sit outside in the night, the feeling of the train rushing across the darkened landscape, giving her such a thrilling taste of freedom she couldn’t bear to leave. It was only when she started nodding off that she at last gave in to her exhaustion and stood, meandering down to her sleeping car and drifting off to thoughts of what lay ahead.
* * * *
On the third afternoon, she finished her driving shift and walked to the observation car, finding Byron alone there, playing the piano. She slipped quietly onto a sofa, delighting in the soft, musical tones, watching his hands move over the keys effortlessly, coaxing delicate melodies that enchanted her.
The light inside the car suddenly dimmed. She peered toward the vis-screens. “Why is it so dark? Did I lose track of time?”
She stood, staring outside. Dark clouds filled the sky. The light had a strange greenish quality to it. Overhead spanned a sky of green cottonball clouds. She recognized that kind of sky—she’d seen it when she and Gordon had first flown west to find the Rovers. Tornado weather. She turned to Byron. “We might be in for a rough ride.”
Shattered Skies Page 6
