“Is this normal?” Perry asked quietly.
“Yes,” Janecia answered just as softly. “As my grandfather said, we live in the day and sleep at night. The houses along here have no windows facing the square to keep the lights out of their houses when the sun is down. Most everyone is asleep or winding down their day. It is the way it has always been for some of us. You two have more technological wonders in your time than we do here thousands of years later.”
“You’ll get there,” Michelle said. “We’ve already seen it.”
“Hopeful for the future, then,” Janecia said. “I also found it hopeful that the cult of the Terraformer goes away. I guess they’re wrong about it.”
“Wrong about what?” Perry asked,
“We were told if it ever shuts down, it will stop feeding the planet, and we will die,” Janecia said. “If it is not in our future, perhaps it is gone, and we survive.”
“I imagine so,” Michelle said. “No one ever mentioned such a thing.”
“I would say we stroll casually over the wall and see what happens,” Janecia said. “Hopefully the outside of the building has some kind of roof access.”
Sounds good,” Perry said.
About as casual as three people could walk, they crossed the square to the building directly next door to the town hall. They moved around the back side of that building to get as close as possible to the town hall before crossing the short distance to it. Still, no one appeared nor was there any indication that anyone saw them. They strolled across the last gap to the side of the town hall itself. Behind the building, it appeared that the city was laid out circularly with the town hall at the center, and the back of the town hall sported a ladder that led to the roof. It was no wonder that Horace seemed so sure they could get up there. Like everything else, it was not even guarded. It was a moment that made Perry and Michelle both nervous since it all felt too easy.
All the same, Janecia led the way up the ladder to the roof which was mostly flat having a slight angle leading to openings along the edge to allow for water runoff and a single trap door in one corner. They tip-toed as softly as possible across the expanse of the roof to the trap door, and the trust of the people with each other showed as the door had only a very simple latch on it and a sliding lock they could easily slide open.
They opened the door, and Janecia looked at Michelle. “We should send in a face your friend will recognize,” she whispered. “It would not be a good idea to have everyone go down there. Need to keep the noise to a minimum.”
Michelle nodded and stepped onto the ladder leading into the building. The ladder was metal along with the catwalk at the bottom of the ladder that spanned the entire width of the room’s ceiling. There was only about six feet between the top of the catwalk and the roof, but she was short enough that she did not have to stoop.
She could hear the muffled voices of Blake and the others in the room below her. She figured there had to be a ladder leading down to the hall that she could see in the darkness at the far end of the catwalk.
Before she could get that far, there was a jarring thud on one side of the room, and she held completely still, not sure what to make of it.
Janecia’s head appeared in the trap door. “What was that?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” Michelle said. She heard the door to the room below swish open followed by a lot of shouting. She barely breathed as she waited for the exchange in the room the end. Finally, the door swished closed again. She considered moving forward again, but before she did anything, a light shined out of the dark hallway, and she realized that they had already figured out the panels were removable. She decided to sit still and wait to see what happened.
She could hear Blake whispering to them in the hall area and followed their soft shuffling and light that appeared to a ladder placed on the wall near the end of the catwalk. She softly walked to the end of the catwalk to await the first person to appear. She was thankful that it was Blake’s head that appeared first. He paused as he saw her standing in the indirect illumination of the open trap door.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Blake was pleasantly surprised to find his break out attempt was met with a mutual effort by Michelle waiting for him at the top of the ladder. If she got in, then it confirmed that they would be able to get out provided the extremely tall Voraster could make their way through the rather short space.
“We came to break you out,” Michelle whispered. “Looks like you beat us to it.”
“Not by much,” Blake whispered. “But it’s good to see you.”
“Perry and one of the locals are on the roof waiting for us,” Michelle said.
“The five survivors are right behind me,” Blake said.
Michelle led the way back to the roof where they found Perry and Janecia, who happily introduced herself immediately. The Voraster ducked below the ceiling to cross the catwalk and did so very quietly. Their double shoulders were almost too wide for the trap door, but they each managed to get out onto the roof to overlook the city.
The combination of night and the almost blinding lights in the central part of town created a fascinating landscape of the simple town square bordered by impenetrable darkness on its borders as if nothing existing out there. The roof of the hall centered in the impressive ring of lights felt like the most exposed position they have possibly found even though they remained unfound to this point.
The five Voraster and four humans sat in a circle on the roof to discuss what was to come next.
“I assume there’s a plan,” Blake said.
“As we were leaving, you heard my grandfather tell me to visit my mother,” Janecia said looking at Michelle and Perry. They nodded. “That wasn’t some sage advice to keep in touch. That was his suggestion as to where we needed to go. It’s actually the best, and probably only, option. The hardest part will be getting you five over there unnoticed. You’re not exactly inconspicuous.”
“We are light on our feet,” Tarlen said. “Trust us to follow, and we will deliver.”
“Obviously, our best bet will be to go back behind the building to that row of buildings there,” Janecia said pointing out behind the hall. The roadway in the front that bordered the huge town square area was decidedly less pronounced in the rear of the building, but still a road. A line of buildings with gaps between them stood on the other side of this road before disappearing into the blank nothingness beyond.
“I really hope my eyes adjust to the dark once we get out past sunland here,” Blake commented.
“Well, you have the stars to help you,” Perry said. “The moon is not so useful.”
“Not very reflective, huh?” Blake asked.
“No, but if you’re into blood moons, you’ll love it,” Perry said.
“Did you all bring wild and deadly animals with you?” Blake asked Janecia.
“We once had a cow crush a farmer’s leg,” Janecia said, “but that’s about as vicious as they get around here.”
“Good to know,” Blake said. “So the way down is at the back?” He stood up and looked over the back side of the building at the ladder. It all seemed fairly straight forward. He turned back to Janecia. “And where does your mother live?”
“On the outskirts of town out that way,” Janecia said, indicating the way they intended to go, “and a bit to the left. She had a large barn next to the house for animals and such, but it also has a second floor where you all can hide.”
“Are we going to the house or straight to the barn?” Blake asked.
“Oh, straight to the barn,” Janecia said. “We can’t be sure of who will be at the house, so we definitely can’t go there. To say that the leadership inspires fear of the Voraster is an understatement. Well, it’s mostly the leader of the Terraformer shrine.”
“Andersoppen, wasn’t it?” Blake asked.
“Yes,” Janecia said coldly. “There are basically two leaders here. We have the one who makes the actual decisions for the benefit of the
people: the President. He’s a nice guy who jokes about being the ruler of the whole world. I mean, I guess he is, but the whole world only has, like, seven thousand people.”
“Seven thousand?” Blake asked. “And you’ve only been here a hundred years?”
“Well, we spent the first twenty on the ship and lost a lot of people when the other Voraster attacked,” Janecia explained.
“How many were on the original ship?” Blake asked.
“Five hundred, I believe,” Janecia said.
“And how many generations?” Blake asked.
“My great-great-grandfather was on the ship,” Janecia said. “They asked that everyone try to have at least three children to ensure we survive. Some had more. Some had less. We tend to start having children at around twenty or so.”
“You said your name was Janecia Long,” Blake said. Janecia nodded. “Was your great-great-grandfather a Lieutenant on the ship?”
“Yeah, we covered that with her already,” Perry said.
“How much of it?” Blake asked dubiously.
“Well,” Perry said hesitantly, “all of it.”
“Normally, I would question that as a good idea,” Blake said, “but knowing that no one remembers any of it, I guess it doesn’t matter. Did you see the manuscript?”
“Apparently, her grandmother hid it somewhere,” Perry said.
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Blake said and then turned back to Janecia. “Your last name is still Long. Are you all changing last names to single families or retaining your original ones?”
“We use both,” Janecia said. “The children are named for both parents so that a family lineage is clear and we can ensure minimal genetic intermixing. There aren’t a lot of people here, so we do our best to make sure that our partners are at least second cousins since that is deemed far enough away genetically to minimize risk.”
“Well, as time goes on, that will get easier,” Blake said. “I imagine it isn’t that hard to find someone you’re not closely related to.”
“No, it’s not,” Janecia said. “I was overjoyed when I found my guy was nowhere close to me in the gene pool.”
“Are you engaged?” Michelle asked.
“We don’t get engaged here,” Janecia said. “I’ve been married for two years. My husband is actually at home with our first child. Or he should be by now. When the crash happened, I wanted to check it out, so he decided to take the baby home to be safe.”
“But you’re so young,” Michelle said. “Not that I have any room to talk.”
“In our times on Earth,” Blake said, “Children are a luxury. They generally happen enough on their own to keep the population well replenished. By my point in history, mandates on maximum children had moved from being only China to most of Europe as well. Italy refused, of course, and the United States became one of the most populous nations on the planet, but we had the space for it. The prospect of colonizing another world, to some people, meant the freedom to build a big family. Colonists are required to reproduce. They won’t take any couples who are incapable of producing offspring. You can’t just go because you want a new place to live. You have to be able to put down roots. It’s a very exacting process. Lots of hurt feelings based on what I know about the colonization requirements.”
“The other leader is the head of the Mirificus Society, who is in charge of maintaining the Terraformer and the guards around it,” Janecia said. “Right now, that man is Harold Andersoppen. He has a history with the Voraster and will tell it repeatedly to anyone who will listen. He is supposed to be a scientific leader, but he has it in his head that he has some kind of authority over the world as well. He doesn’t. He has his corner of it, and he rules that corner and anyone who steps into it with an iron fist. He constantly preached (yes, preached seems like the right word) that the Voraster would return to destroy our world, despite the fact that they agreed not to-”
“This really was unintentional,” Tarlen said.
“I’m not blaming you; I promise,” Janecia said.
“You can understand him?” Blake asked. “I thought you just spoke your own language.”
“We spoke our own language to you because you spoke our language to us,” Tarlen said. “To her, we’re speaking the Galactic Standard. You can’t tell?”
“No, our translator works really well,” Blake said. “I apologize. Continue.”
“He said they’d return, and then this happened,” Janecia continued. “He must be on his high horse in front of a group of people telling them that the whole world will soon end in a firestorm of Voraster battleships.”
“We don’t have battleships,” Tarlen said.
“To him, it doesn’t matter what you have or don’t have,” Janecia said. “He’ll make up whatever he wants to win over his people.”
“How are we to defeat this?” Drizdal asked.
“First, we need to get to my mother’s barn,” Janecia said. She looked over the edge of the roof to the ladder but ducked back immediately. “Matters have changed.”
“What’s going on?” Blake asked.
“There are guards down there now,” Janecia said. Blake peeked over the edge of the building to find a pair of guards looking around the outside of the building. Another couple walked past them. He moved to the side away from the ladder and peeked again. There were six more investigating. He sat back down with his back to the edge wall.
“It appears that our little stunt led them to check things out outside,” Blake said.
“What was that noise down there?” Michelle asked.
“That was us getting the panel loose,” Blake said. “I sacrificed a button for that.” He held up the end of his overcoat showing the frayed threads where a button once lived.
“Do you think they’ll come up here?” Perry asked.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” Janecia said.
“We will be in trouble if they do,” Orest said.
“We want to minimize our impact here,” Faraliv said, “so we can hardly do much of anything to anyone. Even down to incapacitation.”
“Not that they held us to the same regard when they shot Darkur,” Rallafin said.
“Turns out they only have stun weapons,” Perry said.
“Right, the galactic directive,” Blake said. “Or whatever they call it now. It still hurts. I know it’s no consolation, but I did scan your friend out there, and he was dead before they did anything to him. I’m sorry.”
“Well, I knew he was gone,” Drizdal said. “I cling to what hope I can get, but I was not clinging to much at that point.”
“It would be useful if we had anything up here to throw,” Blake said.
“Why would you want to throw something?” Janecia asked. “That won’t help us with their numbers.”
“Not at them,” Blake said. “If we toss something off towards the front of the building, that will draw them off hopefully long enough for us to get down.”
“Oh, I see,” Janecia said. She walked over to the trap door and slid the locking mechanism right out. “Will this do?”
Blake took the metal lock from her. It was just a flat piece of metal with a small metal protrusion on one end that served as a handle. The trap door just had a couple of slots to slide it through, and nothing prevented it from being removed. He tapped in his hand a couple of times as he nodded, considering where to toss it.
“This is perfect,” Blake said. “Thank you. Everyone get next to the ladder. When I throw it, it should make an incredible clatter, and if we’re lucky, they’ll all run off.”
Everyone did as he asked, and once they were ready, he threw the little handle as far as he could. It was light but dense, so it flew across the square and clanged against the brick wall of a house, bounced against one of the structures holding a light with an even louder ting, and then clattered across the ground with its metallic clangs echoing mercilessly off the brick structures.
It worked perfectly. The guards immediately honed
in on it, and every single one converged. As soon as the pair left the ladder area, Janecia led the way down followed by the Voraster five, then Michelle, Perry, and finally Blake. Once they were all down, Janecia ran toward the buildings behind the hall. They had not gone a half dozen steps before finding that at least one guard had not followed the sound.
“Here!” he cried with an incredible volume. “Here! They’re escaping! Alarm!”
He fired his weapon at them as they ran. It felt like it took an eternity to cross the road as if the stress of the situation lengthened the width of the small street to an impossible size. Then one of the shots hit Faraliv. He went down causing Drizdal to pause. He was also hit. Then Michelle was hit. Blake saw Perry pause as soon as Michelle dropped, but he knew they had to escape for now.
“Keep going,” Blake cried out. “We’ll find her. Don’t stop.”
The remaining three Voraster along with Blake, Perry, and Janecia crossed in between the building as more as more stun fire rang out. It hit the walls around them, causing no damage to the structures, but they could not stop. Janecia kept running, and they kept up with her. She took a quick left as soon as she reached the end of those buildings, ran down the street for only a moment before crossing it and passing between buildings on the other side.
In the distance behind them, they could hear footfalls of boots on pavement. They could not let up. Janecia led them behind those house to another street. She crossed it as well and ran down a little bit before passing between the houses that lined it. She turned into someone’s backyard and ran to a barn door. She opened it and waved everyone inside. She closed the door behind them, and no one breathed as they heard the guards rumble by outside.
Then there was nothing but darkness and silence.
CHAPTER NINE
False Invasion Page 6
