Raven regarded her gravely. “We have to get up there. Warn them about the asteroid, about Olivia, about everything.”
“Do we even know they’re still there?” Dirk asked.
Onyx patched into Nimbus’s satellite system and they began looking through stored images. She pointed to a grainy picture. “I see something at the location, but there’s some kind of distortion. It does look like the city has a shield of some sort, but the satellite can’t see through it. It’s like it’s putting out some kind of interference.”
“Probably so the PPC can’t see it,” Raven offered.
“That’s what I was thinking,” she agreed. “I think they’re there.”
“Can we send them a message?” Raven asked. “It’ll take us a while to get up there.”
“We can try.” Onyx backtracked the source of the signal. “What do you want to say?”
H124 thought back to her first warning broadcast on the windy top of the PPC tower in Delta City, warning the citizens to step away from their consoles and take refuge. She wondered how Rowan was faring there now, moving as many people as he could to the bomb shelters.
“Do you think you can use the same code to encrypt a message to them, maybe even embed a video?” Raven asked.
“Aoo. Who wants to record it?”
Willoughby stepped forward. “I will.”
They began to work out a script for Onyx to encrypt. She nodded in approval as they finished it. “This way they’ll know we’re Rovers who cracked their code. We’ll send a text version separately from the video transmission in case the video doesn’t reach them. Double our chances.”
“Sounds good,” Willoughby said. He smoothed his hair back. It had become unruly these last few days. It was strange to see him in Rover clothing, a button-down black shirt and worn pants all made from bamboo, rather than his usual three-piece suit. Willoughby stood in front of H124’s PRD recorder. “Ready when you are.”
She pressed record and pointed to him.
“This is a warning,” he began. “A devastating asteroid is due to hit the earth in only three and a half days. You must seek shelter. It will make impact at the following location.” H124 brought up the coordinates, showing them as subtitles on the screen. “In addition, a contingent of Death Riders, led by the head of the PPC from Delta City, is inbound to your location. They are extremely dangerous and should not be trusted. We’re on our way to lend any assistance you might require.” He nodded at H124, and she turned off the recorder.
She played it back. “Looks good.”
Onyx finished encoding the text message, and sent both of them out. “Let’s hope they’re listening and not just transmitting.”
“It’ll be light soon,” Raven said, checking the time. “Let’s get some sleep.”
Everyone curled up again on the floor, H124 once more making a pillow of her jacket. It was freezing in the genebank, which was good for the samples, but H124 shivered all the same.
She was just drifting off when her PRD beeped. She looked down to see an incoming call from Rowan.
Moving away so she wouldn’t wake the others, she entered the darkness of a neighboring room, slipping on her jacket. She brought up the window.
“H,” Rowan said. “We expected to get a message saying you were on your way back.” Behind him she could see an elaborate dining room, with a long table stretching at least twenty feet behind him, and framed paintings, mostly portraits and landscapes.
“We ran into some trouble.”
He raised a brow.
“Olivia had brought some of her people down here, along with troopers and Death Riders.”
“What?”
“She must have forged an alliance with them.” She told him about Onyx hacking the cranial webs, and how Astoria was one of the DisPos units.
His mouth parted. “I can’t believe it. How’s Dirk?”
“Shocked but happy. Hasn’t left her side.”
“I’ll bet. Are you coming up now, then?”
She frowned. “There’s more.” She told him about the signal they’d received, and how those people might not know about the asteroid. “Olivia might attack. She’ll need a place to wait out the impact. So we’re going up there.”
“You won’t make it back here in time.”
“If Melbourne City still has its shield, it’s possible we can weather the impact there.”
“That’s a big if.”
“Onyx saw some kind of shield there on satellite images.”
Rowan glanced around, considering. “I don’t feel right staying up here while you’re all risking your lives. If Olivia does attack, you’re going to need help.”
“She might just have the one airship,” H124 told him. “And we don’t know what kind of defenses these people have.”
“More airships might arrive, like the one that picked her up.”
He had a point.
“I’m coming down there. Going to gather as many fighters who are willing to come with me.”
“You don’t have to do that, Rowan. It helps knowing you’re safe up there.”
“If something happened to you all down there, I would never feel right about it.”
“But—”
“I’m coming. Send me the coordinates.”
She sent him the location to Melbourne City. She couldn’t deny the fact that she felt bolstered by the thought of him arriving with reinforcements. But if the shield couldn’t protect them from the effects of the impact…
“I’ll send you a message when I get closer. And H…”
“Yes?”
He hesitated, appearing as if he wanted to say something, then changed his mind. “Be careful.”
“I will.”
She returned to her place on the floor, leaving her jacket on. Nearby Astoria slept soundly, blissfully, the first real sleep she’d had in a long time. H124 smiled, then curled up on the floor and tried to follow her into the same land of dreams.
* * * *
In the morning Raven placed a call to Winslow, who had been running the Argo’s engines all night, circling it to keep the engines warm and rime off the skin.
“We’re ready,” he told her.
She nodded. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Raven slung his pack over his shoulder. “We’re moving out!” he called to everyone. The remaining DisPos soldiers regarded him curiously. “Anyone who wishes to join us is welcome to. But I should warn you that we will very likely be heading right back into another battle. You can stay here, but I don’t recommend it. We can give you food, but it won’t last long enough to wait out the fallout from the asteroid impact. You are welcome to take shelter on our airship until the battle is over.”
Dirk slid up beside him. “How do you know we can trust them? They could sabotage the Argo as soon as they’re on it. We don’t know these people. They could be as bad as the PPC. Some of them were PPC, remember, former soldiers.”
Astoria leaned over to her brother. “And some were like me.”
The DisPos soldiers huddled together, murmuring. Garrett spoke up. “We’re with you. And I, for one, will fight.”
“So will I,” Scarlet said. The others cast their tired gazes down. Most of them were so thin that H124 could see their bony frames beneath the tattered uniforms.
One man had taken off his jacket, and she could see his jutting shoulder blades and ribs protruding from his undershirt. She would be amazed if he had the energy to walk, let alone fight.
They heard the outside rumbling of the Argo’s four engines, and moved to the door.
Bracing themselves for a freezing blast of air, they swung the door open. H124 witnessed the strange dawn as the sun rose just above the horizon. The oblique angle made the light strange, ethereal.
They filed up the ramp onto th
e Argo. All of the DisPos soldiers came with them. She and Raven locked the doors behind them. Then his gaze met hers. “This place will be able to withstand the effects of the impact. All that DNA. Missing pieces to our collection. I can imagine the rewilded world already.” He managed a small smile, and they turned, H124’s thoughts on the struggle ahead. She fought away images of the PPC destroying Tathra as they had Sanctuary City.
They had to stop them.
Chapter 22
The Argo headed north, sailing over the crystal white landscape. As they drew closer to the ocean, the icy terrain gave way to bare mountains, in deep browns and reds.
“It’s really warming up down here,” Raven said. “Look at that! Plants are growing.”
H124 followed his gaze out the window, descrying patches of green dotting the plains. In the distance she saw the ocean, sparkling and blue, dazzling even under the low sun, which lay beneath a bank of clouds.
Raven leaned forward. “It’s hard to believe that vast ice shelves used to spill off this continent.”
“What happened to it all?” H124 asked.
“Like in Greenland, things started warming abruptly, much faster than a natural warming cycle. Huge cracks developed, and the ice shelves broke off into the sea. The flooding was disastrous.”
H124 thought of the remains of the city she’d seen off the coast of New Atlantic, where buildings peeked out above the waves. An arm holding a torch, an elaborate spire.
Once they reached the open ocean, the wind tore at the Argo once more. It buffeted its sides, gusting against the glass windows. Huge waves surged below, with curling whitecaps. Soon ocean was all she could see.
Dirk and Astoria sat off in one corner, talking quietly. Astoria slouched, looking haggard, her cheekbones pronounced, her arms too thin. Dirk brought her food. They ate largely in silence.
When they’d been motoring for a few hours, Raven checked his PRD and conferred with Winslow. No return message had come through from Tathra.
H124 wondered if they would receive the message before Olivia got there. Then a darker thought occurred to her. They still didn’t know if a shield was under that distortion on the satellite images of Melbourne City. How long ago had the message from Tathra gone out? It was on auto-repeat. Would the city even still be there? She moved over to where Willoughby sat at a table, eating a salad.
He dotted his mouth with a napkin as she sat down. “I didn’t know how amazing real food tasted.”
H124 recalled her own first experience eating greens, the pea she’d eaten straight off the vine in Sanctuary City. “Incredible, isn’t it?”
Willoughby nodded, chewing with savor.
“What do you think Olivia will do when she reaches Tathra?”
Willoughby put his fork down. “I imagine she doesn’t know the PPC isn’t in power there. She probably thinks that as a high-ranking exec, she can waltz in and take over, or at least find a spot on the programming board.”
“And when she finds out the PPC is gone?”
“Likely lay low, figure out her next move. But the clock is ticking for her to find shelter before the impact.”
Raven approached the table, catching the end of their conversation. “The clock is ticking for all of us.”
* * * *
As they drew closer, even from miles out at sea, H124 could see the shimmering atmospheric dome of Tathra. It did exist. The shield wasn’t amber like the megacities run by the PPC. This dome was transparent, and from some angles she could barely see it. She assumed that natural light streamed through to the ground below. It didn’t glow, so she imagined that at night, you could even see the stars.
It rose up, vanishing into a bank of clouds.
“If they have automated defenses,” Winslow said, “this might be a short trip.”
They flew along the perimeter, keeping to the coast. The environmental shield extended to the farthest edges of land. She didn’t see any buildings, only natural terrain, verdant and vibrant. Winslow’s transmitter told them that Olivia’s ship had stopped some way out to sea along the western coast. They headed in that direction, intending to intercept her.
H124 couldn’t tear her eyes away from the sights through the clear shield. They passed over steep snow-capped mountains, between whose peaks lay lush valleys with sapphire lakes, blooming wildflowers in vast meadows, and dense forests of pine.
Onyx once again sent out the warning video, along with the encrypted message. They’d gotten no response. As they covered more ground, H124 didn’t see any sign of human habitation below. The land thrived, entirely natural. Beaches, mountains, forests, deserts, waterfalls, rivers…
“We’re nearing Olivia’s location,” Winslow called out from the cockpit.
Raven joined her at the control console, standing over her shoulder. “Let’s hang back. Can you put on the long-range view?”
Winslow brought up a floating display, revealing a close-up of the Death Rider ship. It hovered, holding its position a few hundred feet above the ocean surface.
H124 joined Raven. “What are they doing?”
“Scheming, most likely,” said Willoughby, who’d come up behind her. “By now she’s got to know the PPC doesn’t exist here anymore. The asteroid is coming, and she’s run out of options.”
H124 thought of their own chances. By now, all the people from Badlander camps would be taking refuge in the bomb shelters, supplied with food and water, joining whomever Rowan had managed to save from Delta City.
But if they stayed to help Tathra, the Argo wouldn’t be able to make the journey back there in time to join them. Nor would Rowan and the fighters who headed here even now.
She’d always thought this quest might be a one-way mission. Find the Rovers and stop the asteroid, or die trying. Then the plan had changed. They’d had to check and secure the vaults, make sure the samples were still viable. Ensure that the species driven extinct by society could be resurrected after the asteroid fell. But the new mission hadn’t left much room for their own survival.
Down below, some remnants of the PPC megacity came into view. Many of the buildings had toppled or been dismantled, and greenery grew on everything. She pulled out her diginocs and studied the streets. Small batches of crops grew along the shores of a river. She zoomed in more, spotting movement among the upper stories of one of the taller buildings. As she adjusted the focus, she saw they were birds of prey, diving and returning to perch, swooping at incredible speeds through what was left of the urban canyon.
The people had used the remaining structures to simulate steep canyon walls. She’d read about a bird in one of her books, the peregrine falcon, whose populations grew so low due to habitat loss, that some people had started an initiative to bring them into cities to nest, where they could dive off the sides of skyscrapers to hunt. For a while it had worked, until pressures from drought, megastorms, and human population growth had proven too much and the falcons had died out.
She scanned the terrain with her nocs. Though she saw no sign of them, she wondered if the people of Tathra were down there right now. Maybe they dwelled in living buildings like the Rovers, and the structures would be too hard to spot from the air.
“Something’s happening.” Winslow zoomed in on the underbelly of Olivia’s airship. A vehicle dropped out, then shot toward the shield. A lone Death Rider rode on the back of the small, sleek craft, his long hair streaming behind him, his face painted red, teeth bared.
“What is that?” H124 asked.
“A combat glider,” Winslow answered. “A one-person flying craft. Without a pressurized cabin, they can’t go too high, obviously, but they’re fast and maneuverable. And armed.” She pointed out the two forward guns, and a rear gun on a pivoting arm.
The Death Rider sped along the wall of the shield.
“What is he doing?” Raven asked.
“Look
ing for ingress?” Winslow offered.
He sped away from them, out of sight, headed in the opposite direction. They lost sight of him as he rounded the wall. “At least he went the other way,” Raven said.
Just then a second and third combat glider dropped out of the underbelly. They shot off directly toward the Argo. “You had to say that out loud, didn’t you?” Astoria mumbled. She’d come up behind them and leaned a hand on Dirk’s shoulder. She still looked ragged and half-starved.
“What do we do?” H124 asked.
Winslow took them up, rising through the clouds, where they were out of sight.
A few minutes later, H124 heard the gliders rocket beneath them. “Do you think they saw us?”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Winslow said. She moved them laterally, gliding above the clouds. The Argo was quiet. H124 clenched her jaw as they crept though the sky, moving up and away from the Death Rider airship. But now they couldn’t see what it was doing, or where the gliders were.
Winslow continued to rise. “The gliders won’t come up here at least. Too little oxygen.”
The clouds quaked and parted before their eyes, and the Argo’s shell vibrated with a low thrum. H124 looked out the starboard window to see clouds rushing by. Then they parted, and a sleek silver airship slid into view.
“We’re spotted!” Winslow called out.
The thrumming grew louder, and H124 knew it all too well. The airship was powering up its main weapon. One blast from that thing and the Argo would go down in flames.
They had to fight back. H124 thought of the glass gunner pods located on either side of the ship, which until now hadn’t been used. She darted toward the hatch that led to a gunner station. “Someone get the other gun!” she shouted. She hefted open the hatch, climbing down the ladder into the gunner seat.
Pivoting the gun, she targeted the airship’s main weapon. Though it was a powerful armament, the exit port for the airship’s blast was small and inconveniently located near the underside. She opened up the comm channel on her PRD to Winslow. “We have to get lower!”
The Argo dipped with sickening speed. H124’s ears started to throb, the vibration from the airship’s weapon so close it hurt. She peered up, swiveling the gun around, and unleashed a stream of fire at the weapon. The hits tore along the airship’s hull, missing the target altogether. She’d never fired this kind of gun before, and it showed. She tried again. The Argo dropped more, and the angle opened up, giving her more room. Again she swiveled the gun, this time hitting home. Smoke billowed out from the airship’s weapon port. The low vibration choked and sputtered, then cut to a high-pitched whine. Then the entire armament dropped off the airship’s underside, plummeting down. H124 craned her neck to see it explode as it fell out of sight, shards of glowing metal raining in flaming trails.
Shattered Skies Page 23
