Hybrid: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 4)

by Valerie J Mikles

  “Out there, silly,” she said, pointing through one of the cracks in the Dome. The hole was three times larger than a house and had happened some time after the initial disaster while they were away. The crack stretched up to the peak of the Dome and down to ground level, but was widest in the central part. On a clear day, they could see the canopy of the forest peeking over the plateau.

  “Do you want to take a walk?” he asked, bracing himself for an extended conversation. “Get your shoes on. I’ll pack a snack.”

  Liza shook her head and sat on the windowsill, closing her eyes and tilting her body back. “I see them with my eyes closed,” she said, pointing outside. After the destruction of Boone, there was no glass left in the windows. No fabric. No flesh. Just the two of them, and bunch of broken, hollowed houses.

  “Are the drones buzzing around again?” Kerris asked, sitting next to her, his heart twisting with fear. Before the destruction of the city, the Praet had built a prototype drone to detect genetically engineered hybrids. The city’s AI had replicated the technology and manufactured dozens, but they were all mixed in with security drones on the outside of the Dome.

  “It’s an airship,” she said. Her finger moved back and forth as though tracing its motion through the sky. “People talk about them, but I’ve never seen one up close. I wish they would come here.”

  Kerris shrugged off his exoskeleton. The fact that Kerris’ grief could literally bring down a city made hiding difficult. With the Gavameti, they were close to a normal life. They were old enough to control their emotions, practiced at maintaining calm and leaving no footprint. At least that’s what Kerris had thought going in. “No, you don’t. Liza, we need a break. You read them and you get overwhelmed. Then I get overwhelmed.”

  “It’s been three months since we came back. Don’t you miss being around people?” she asked, touching the tattoo on his wrist. It was a symbol of unity—his marriage to a Gavameti woman. Kerris’ grief surged and ripples appeared in the buckets of water.

  “Accidents happen,” Liza insisted. “And when we find people like us, they won’t drive us away for being what we are.”

  “People like us don’t exist in the natural world,” Kerris said, watching the airship zig-zag through the sky. The ship disappeared behind a cloud, but Kerris pushed the cloud aside so they could dream a little longer. “It doesn’t look like they’re coming this way.”

  “I’ll bring them here for you,” Liza offered.

  “We’ve tried living with humans, Liza,” Kerris sighed. “We’re here because there’s no one here that can hurt us.”

  “That’s not my fault!” Liza exploded, launching off the sill, kicking up a cloud of dust as she stomped. “It’s not my fault there’s no one left!”

  “Well I didn’t do it!” Kerris retorted.

  “If I could obliterate people with my mind, you’d be gone too!” Liza shouted.

  The mental slam accompanying her outburst felt like a machete ripping through Kerris’ brain. He shielded his mind, but the physical force of the blow knocked him flat on his back. A moment later, the pressure lifted. Kerris ran his tongue over the backs of his teeth. He felt the tickle of blood trickling from his nose.

  “Kerris!” Liza cried, scrambling on all fours. “Kerris, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you so hard.”

  She dabbed the blood from his face, then clung to him, crying. He cried too, his anger at the destruction of Boone as fresh as the day it happened.

  “You said they were going to hurt us,” she cried. “There’s always someone who wants to hurt us.”

  “Not here. Not anymore,” he said, taking pity on her. He told himself it was the Praet who did this to them—they forced Liza to defend herself. He could tell himself ten times a day, but he still blamed Liza. More than he should.

  “I don’t want you to be alone,” she whispered. Every time they joined a new tribe, she was never content to let him work and earn their keep; she made sure he found friends, family, lovers, or whatever companionship he needed.

  Kerris sighed, and looked out at the open sky, daring to dream. The airship was gone—blocked by the wall of the Dome. They were alone.

  Liza paced the street outside her window, barefoot, her eyes going back to that crack that let her glimpse the outside world. An airship was different than a nomadic tribe. An airship could take her places, and she wouldn’t be trapped on game trails and in wild groves, her path through the world governed by seasons. They could live in a proper city again—a city like Boone used to be.

  Tripping over a greeter bot, she stubbed her toe and hopped in a circle, cursing.

  “Shoes are required in public roadways,” the dull, copper bot said. It was no bigger than a shoebox itself, and she had half a mind to gut it and make it into one.

  “Then bring me shoes” she retorted, hobbling back to her window and examining her toe. “Don’t have any shoes in the city, do we? No. Supplies are out. Shoes have been ordered. Don’t tell me shoes are required and then tell me we have none!”

  “Shoes will be delivered as soon as they are in stock,” the bot acknowledged, rolling off on its new errand. Liza rubbed her foot. She had shoes. She’d run from the Gavameti wearing them, and they were in good condition. But she didn’t know how long Kerris was going to make them stay in Boone this time, and the painful memory of losing her Gavameti family wasn’t worth wearing thin the footwear. But the airship—they would have proper footwear.

  There was a trick Liza had been doing since before she could speak—she could enter a mind and see through a person’s eyes. It was a delicate process, different from sorting memories, and often more overwhelming as nothing was filtered.

  Reaching out her mind, she saw six visitors on the ship, and she found the one at the ship’s controls. There was a projection in the Spirit Realm that seemed like it should be coming from the eyes, but Liza couldn’t make heads or tails of what she saw. She’d never been on a ship.

  Finally, Liza recognized a human face. She must have done something wrong, if she was seeing a face instead of hands. It was a pale woman with brown, wavy hair and bright green eyes. Maybe they were looking into a mirror. The woman had a creepy frown, and it felt like she was staring directly at Liza. Liza tried to see around her. They were in a kitchen with a large window. It didn’t look like a ship; it looked like a memory. It looked like one of the houses in Boone, but from years ago before everyone died. There was a table and chairs, and windows made of glass. But outside the window, the land was gray.

  “You’re in my head,” the green-eyed woman said.

  Liza gasped. Something wasn’t right.

  “You don’t belong here. Leave.”

  A wall formed around Liza, blacking out the view of the woman and the world, but Liza fought to stay connected.

  Open your eyes, Liza commanded. Speaking directly into a person’s mind rarely worked with common humans. Everyone had their own head language, and while she could understand others with relative ease, other did not tend to understand her. Kerris said it used to be like that with them, but Liza was too young to remember.

  “This is my space,” the woman insisted, giving Liza a stern eyebrow raise.

  “Come west and find my city,” Liza asked, trying to mimic the language she heard. She tried to project an image of Boone, but she did not know what the world looked like from up in the clouds.

  “I cannot change course,” the woman responded. She understood! The black wall came up, dividing them again.

  “Wait!” Liza cried. “Are you like me? Is that why we can talk? Please, I want you to come! Show me where you are.”

  There was a flash of images—a control panel, dials, gauges. Liza couldn’t read the writing. It vanished in a puff of smoke.

  When the mist cleared, Liza was in a dark cavern. A grotesque beast with the face of a horse, the teeth of a snake, and the body of a man snarled at Liza. It had dark skin, long talons, and leathery wings. The beast dispersed in a flash
of light and the green-eyed woman came flying toward Liza. Raising her hands in defense, Liza splayed her talons and snarled. In this realm, she looked more like the beast than the woman, but she’d never fought. There was nothing solid here; only dust and blood.

  The green-eyed woman was weak and human in this realm—no claws, no teeth, no wings. With one powerful swipe, Liza ripped off half of the woman’s face. The woman cowered, black dust misting from her wound. The image of the dark cavern persisted.

  Ruthlessly, Liza dragged her talons across the cave of the wall, kicking up more ashes, dust, and memories of the same. The green-eyed woman did not stop her. Liza did not know if she’d be able to get to the real memories, or see out of this woman’s true eyes. She couldn’t escape the woman’s mind. She was trapped!

  2

  Day 30

  My sweet Myung,

  Today, I saw both of Aquia’s moons in the daytime. One looked pink, the other white. It is so strange to sit out in the open air and not worry about my skin boiling within minutes. I still burn if I stay out more than an hour, and we’re out of soothing ointment. My skin heals darker each time.

  I can’t believe it has been almost a month since I met Sky. Since I learned there is life outside of Rocan. Travel has been slow, but that only means we get to see more of the land and the animals that live on it. Sometimes the ship falls apart, sometimes the people.

  I played darts with Sky this morning, which I didn’t think she should do, considering that the Drava stabbed her in the gut last week. But she showed me her belly, and there isn’t even a scar. Tray says it’s part of her alien super-healing power. Everyone tells me he’s joking, but as soon as I convince myself I’m traveling with normal humans, they pull some new kind of magic to blow my mind. Tray says he can make my head explode just by staring and I don’t want to take any chances.

  Love,

  Papa

  Hawk paused at the bottom of the page and reread his journal entry, using Nolwazi, the ship’s computer, to check his translation. He liked to write his letters in his native language of Rocanese first, then translate them into Trade on the facing page. Addressing it as a letter to his stillborn daughter gave him peace. At home, her name was taboo, but on Oriana, he could mourn her. He often wondered if Myung would have inherited his golden skin and lidless eyes. With the name he’d given her, he couldn’t imagine her with her mother’s fair skin. The more he wrote to her, the more he pictured her as a golden, and the prouder he became of who he was.

  “What is that?” Amanda asked the question in her native language of Lanvarian and Nolwazi translated to Trade a moment later. There were so many languages spoken on the ship, and he and Amanda did not have a common one, so they relied on the wrist-top Virtual Projection Network devices (Virps) they wore to translate.

  Amanda sat in the pilot’s chair with one hand on the yoke, the other in a sling. Amanda had been in a psychotic rage a few weeks back, and Sky knocked her out. With Amanda’s bones weakened by years in lunar gravity, the fall resulted in a break. Even with a broken arm, she flew more smoothly than Hawk. She had a natural sense for air currents and knew how to use the tailwind to her advantage. She said it was like sailing with boats. Her skin had freckled in the sunlight, her frizzy, brown hair bleached with streaks of blonde. She was about five years older than him, but had limited memory of the last ten years of her life, so she often pretended she was still seventeen. When she was sane.

  “What is what?” he asked in Trade. Hawk sat in the captain’s chair on the bridge of Oriana, taking in the view from an altitude of four thousand feet. They stopped often to keep the engine from overheating, or when pieces fell off and they needed to retrieve them. The ship spanned three decks. Four, if you counted the Observation Deck, which was barely tall enough to sit up in. It was taller than most buildings, but with its retractable wings, could slide into the larger dome gates, to a point where it was clear to Hawk that the enclosed cities of the planet had been designed to let ships like Oriana inside. Over two-hundred feet from bow-to-stern, it was difficult to find places to land. Having engines and landing gear designed for upward rocket thrust and vertical motion also made their impromptu glide-in landings a challenge.

  Last week, the middeck hatch blew out when the ship lost pressure at high altitude. The Captain’s brother Tray was nearly sucked out of the shower. His Virp went overboard and Nolwazi sounded an alarm. Danny practically crashed the ship in his hurry to come about and retrieve Tray. They’d set down on the nearest beach, and then Tray came stumbling into the bay in his bathrobe, asking if anyone was hurt. The Captain hugged his brother for a full minute, and it took over a week to repair the hatch. Hawk took advantage of the stop to practice flying his glider while Danny and the others patched over the hatch with bits of metal they sheered off the interior decks. His glider was a single-engine plane that fit easily into the cargo bay of the massive ship.

  “There’s something over there. Look; something is flying,” Amanda said, squinting her eyes, activating the ocular device, or Occ, attached to her brow. Like him, she was one of Danny’s rescue projects. Sometimes she was violent, sometimes playful, and sometimes creepy. There were times he felt like he could see right through her—this tattered shell of a person—but he tried not to look at her that way.

  “Is it a bird?” There were no birds in the valley that cloistered Hawk’s home city of Rocan, and Hawk loved encountering them naturally in the world.

  “It’s mechanical,” she said, tilting the yoke and turning the ship toward the mountains.

  “I don’t see. How far?” he pouted, capping his pen. Her Occ let her see farther than her natural eyes, though she needed the device for natural vision as well. “Why are you turning? Do you think it’s Quin?”

  He waited for Nolwazi to translate, but even when it did, she didn’t reply. Danny had encouraged him to program some Rocanese phrases into the computer, but he preferred to learn their language rather than rely on the computer. He’d tried conversation in Lanvarian, but once he got past “hi,” “how are you,” and “what’s for supper,” all he really knew were the names of engine parts and the swear words Tray had taught him.

  “Nolwazi, what is our new heading?” Hawk tried.

  “The pilot has issued a new heading,” the computer replied, most unhelpfully.

  “Amanda?” Hawk asked.

  “Open your eyes,” she droned, her head ticking to the side.

  Hawk shivered. His mother yelled those words at him frequently before he left home—often in manic, violent states—and Hawk could almost see the mania descending on Amanda now.

  “My eyes are open. You’re using the Occ and I can’t see that far.” A cloud moved into their path and the ship dropped a few feet, giving him butterflies. Oriana maintained a relatively low altitude, which put them in turbulent air.

  “Amanda, do you need help?” Hawk really wanted to take the yoke. There were two yokes on the bridge—one for the captain and one for the pilot. Hawk liked to hold the yoke and pretend he was the one flying. Danny let Hawk pretend. Sometimes, he let Hawk fly when all they needed to do was hold course. Amanda didn’t like when Hawk pretended to fly. She said it was distracting.

  Hawk fingered the yoke anyway, and blew air from his pursed lips. Amanda turned the ship again, and Hawk’s journal slid off the chair.

  “Kerf, Amanda!” Hawk swore, retrieving the book. She must have found an air current, but usually, she gave a little warning before following those.

  “Open your eyes,” she warned again.

  “Saskia?”

  Saskia’s hand flew to her stunner and she dropped under the ward room table for cover.

  “Wow,” Tray chuckled, peeking under the table and raising his hands in mock surrender. “My feet are so heavy, I can’t believe you didn’t hear me coming. Weren’t you supposed to be lying down?”

  “Can’t sleep with Amanda flying,” she said, resuming her seat, ignoring the blood pounding in her ears. Th
e ward room was one of Saskia’s least favorite places, but it was the most effective place from which to monitor the ship’s systems. Every system that still worked was wired through here. It was situated at the intersection of the bridge and engine room, the outer walls lined with monitors and consoles, the center filled with a conference table, although they never conferred here.

  “She’s flying because you and Danny keep having dizzy spells and Sky is healing from an abdominal wound. Hawk’s keeping an eye on Amanda,” Tray laughed. Everything on the ship was falling to pieces, except for him. He was cheerful and pristinely dressed in a long-sleeve, fitted V-neck and elbow-length fingerless gloves. His mood had improved significantly now that his ebony skin had healed from Moon Pox.

  “Hawk’s sick, too, and well past what a field medic can handle. His inability to digest our food has moved from a stomach problem to intestinal, and it’s getting worse. He’s down another five pounds,” Saskia said.

  “On the plus side, he’s stopped picking fights with me,” Tray smiled, putting a hand on her shoulder. Knowing him to be so touch-averse, she smiled at his growing ease. A week ago, he’d never have touched her, but their friendship had blossomed since their most recent near-death experience. The fact that she wasn’t lying on her death bed now told her it was more than the fear of losing her that compelled him to reach out. “I found things he can eat, we’re just running out of things.”

  “We’re running out of things because we sat on that beach for over a week!” Saskia replied.

  “We sat on that beach for a week because the ship broke and the only people who could fix it were in a coma, recovering from a stabbing, or suffering food poisoning,” Tray bristled, crossing his arms. “Amanda helped when she was sane, but then she’d have a schizophrenic episode. It was just me and our smart-mouth Nolwazi, and half the time, I was running around making sure the rest of you didn’t die.”