Astoria gestured for H124 to retrieve it. She hurried to the desk, checking for any kind of trap, then tentatively slid it open. Inside lay a surgical tube with a small claw on one end. H124 held it up. “Is this what controls the sphere?”
Olivia nodded, gritting her teeth, sweat beading on her forehead.
H124 came back around the desk. “Where are you jamming the spacecraft from?” she demanded. Olivia pursed her lips and closed her eyes.
Astoria kicked her in the side. “Where?” she shouted.
When she still didn’t receive a response, Astoria stomped down on her arm, pinning her wrist against the ground. Then she fired point blank into the woman’s hand. Olivia shrieked, and H124 felt a little sick.
H124 knelt down beside her. “Don’t you understand? It’s not just going to destroy BEC City. A terrestrial hit that big will cause firestorms, earthquakes. We’d all suffer.”
Olivia opened her eyes, and tortured tears joined a river of sweat to meander down her face.
Astoria stomped down hard on her forearm. “Your other hand’s next. Then your head. Don’t think a medpod will help much with that.”
“Okay,” Olivia whispered, shaking. “Okay. Go to the main display. Enter this code.”
H124 hurried to the woman’s desk, and brought up her main display. At the terminal window, she paused.
“ENT145OVERRIDE,” Olivia told her.
H124 entered it. A stream of data came in. She opened a comm window to Onyx. “I’m in,” she told the hacker, then turned her PRD’s camera so Onyx could see the display.
The hacker nodded approvingly. “This is good. Okay. Enter the following just as I’m typing it here.”
She typed in a series of complex commands, and H124 entered them into the terminal verbatim. The terminal window shut down, then rebooted.
“Now enter this,” Onyx added, providing additional coding. “This will lock them out.”
H124 typed it in, then turned to see Astoria staring down with utter contempt, her pistol trained on Olivia’s head.
“Stay on the line,” Onyx told her. For a few tense minutes they waited. Blood pooled beneath Olivia, as sweat dripped from the tip of Astoria’s nose.
“All right!” Onyx yelled.
H124 heard Orion cheering in the background. “We’re back in. Going to launch the craft now, maneuver it the right distance, and detonate. It’s going to be close.”
Onyx looked at her. “You did good.”
Raven bent down into the frame. “Get the hell out of there, H.”
H124 closed down the display, then vaulted over the desk. She looked down at the bleeding wreck that was her grandmother. “You lied about Willoughby.”
Olivia’s gaze fluttered as she focused on H124. “Is that what he told you?”
“You arranged the death of your own daughter.”
“That’s what he wants you to believe.”
“She was going to reveal to the world what you really are. A monster.”
“He’s playing on your emotions. Can’t you see that?” Olivia whispered. “He can’t be trusted.”
Astoria aimed at Olivia’s head. “Let’s finish her off.”
H124 reached out, staying Astoria’s arm. “No. Let’s just leave.”
Astoria glared at H124. “She’ll just crawl into a medpod.” She looked back at Olivia, dark eyes dripping with hatred. “She tried to kill my brother. He still might die.”
“Let’s just go. We have to get back to save him. We have to move fast.”
“I could put a bullet in her head by the time I finish this sentence.”
“She’s my grandmother,” H124 said. “Let’s just go.”
Reluctantly, Astoria lowered her gun, and spat on the crippled woman’s face. Eyes cast downward, H124 hurried back to the maintenance door, and slipped through. She and Astoria hurried down the hall, back to Willoughby’s old quarters.
They still had to get out of the city. She patched through to Onyx again. “We’re ready,” she told the hacker, and sent her coordinates. They climbed out onto the balcony, where the wind whipped violently around them. This high up, the streets below looked distorted, the sheer height playing tricks on H124’s sense of perspective. Far below the roofs of smaller buildings bristled upward, too many to count. They watched the atmospheric shield, glowing not too far from their location.
Astoria started to pace. “We should have killed her,” she snarled, snugging her pistol back into its holster. Then the shield flickered, and a hole opened. It was considerably lower than where they stood now. If they angled their suits just right, they could sail through.
“Okay. Let’s go!” Astoria latched the extractor tool safely inside her tactical vest. She then leapt off the balcony, her chute opening behind her. She adjusted the flight controls, sweeping perfectly toward the shield opening.
H124 stood on the edge of the balcony, trying not to look down. She lowered her goggles, took a deep breath and leapt. She brought up her PRD as she soared, making a few slight adjustments, gliding closely behind Astoria. They sailed downward, wind streaming through their hair.
As they soared over the top of one of the buildings, its roof door slammed open. PPC troopers stormed out, their flash bursters setting the night afire. H124 veered wildly, narrowly missing an electrical blast, its radiance burning her retina. But Astoria wasn’t so lucky. A flash hit her, and her flight suit malfunctioned. H124 saw her bank out of control, the chute fluttering erratically behind her. She sailed past the roof with the troopers, but H124 could tell she was no longer in control. She veered toward her friend just as the roof of a second building loomed up below. Astoria tried to pull up, but she came in too fast. She jabbed at the display of her PRD, but already she was plummeting. H124 watched as she collided with the roof of a third building. There she tumbled to a stop, tangled up in the chute.
H124 aimed toward her, coming in a little slower than she had before, and managed to land a few feet away from Astoria. The chute retracted into the pack, and H124 ran to her friend. A fist punched out from the bundle of the chute, and H124 helped Astoria unwrap herself.
The warrior got to her feet, throwing off the lines from the chute. “Fuck!” she shouted. “The damn thing’s fried.” She punched at the display, and the chute started to retract, then stopped. “It’s not responding.”
H124 looked off in the distance, where the hole in the shield still held, a dark polygon in a wall of glowing amber.
Astoria manually bundled up the chute and ripped the pack off her back, then crammed it inside. Strapping it back on, she looked to H124. “I’m not getting out of here with this.”
“Can’t mine carry both of us?”
“You remember what Raven said. They were only starting to develop a tandem jumper. We’re too heavy.”
H124 looked to the roof door. “Then we climb down. This looks like a residential building. There won’t be anyone out and about. It’ll be a clear path all the way down to the street. Then we make a break for the shield.”
Astoria looked over her shoulder at the hole’s placement. “Onyx’ll have to hack a hole at the top of the retaining wall. No way we’d make it up that high,” she said, gesturing at the current hole.
H124 brought up her comm window. “Onyx. We need you to open a different hole, one just at the top of the wall.”
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Astoria’s flight suit has been fried.”
“Okay. I’m on it.” She switched off.
“All right. Let’s start down.” H124 ran toward the roof door, but it slammed open before she got there. Garbed in black, face shields down, PPC troopers streamed out by the dozens. She couldn’t believe how many there were. They just kept pouring out, like a plague of beetles.
There was no way they were going to make it down the stai
rwell, now choked with soldiers. H124 ran to the ledge, staring down the side of the building, trying to spot an old fire escape or drain pipe, anything they could climb, but the walls were smooth. No ledges, nothing to hold on to.
The troopers closed in, training their flash bursters on them. Down below, more soldiers flooded the street, energy rifles pointed up at them.
Even if they got down to the street, there was no way they’d get through all those troopers.
“Astoria! What do we do?” H124 called. Astoria ran to her side, gazing off the side of the building.
Astoria turned and faced the advancing soldiers. H124 whipped around, standing side by side with her, heart hammering in her chest. Then Astoria grabbed her by the shoulder, and yanked her close. “Take this!” she said, sliding the extractor tool into H124’s vest.
Astoria shoved her off the roof.
H124 tumbled down, grappling against the violent air to reach her PRD and turn on the flight suit’s control. The chute whipped out, jerking her upward and knocking the wind out of her chest. She gasped, struggling to look back over her shoulder. She saw Astoria grab her grenade belt and run from the edge, bellowing a war cry. Moments later a great explosion claimed the entire roof. Fire bloomed upward, followed by a billowing cloud of smoke and debris.
“Astoria!” cried H124, helpless. Below her, hundreds of jolts flashed out as the troopers fired on her. She angled the suit away from them, tears pooling in her goggles. “Astoria!” she shouted again. She glanced behind to see the upper stories of the building aflame, fire licking up into the darkness.
Ahead, a new hole opened in the shield, down by the top of the wall. She looked back to see the troopers in the street pushing out a massive sonic gun, training it on her. She’d seen the destruction it could wield when they’d attacked Black Canyon Camp. She whipped to the side, flying erratically, zigzagging, doing all she could to survive.
The hole loomed closer, and just as she heard the dull whump of the sonic weapon fire, she sailed through the shield, into the darkness beyond, gliding over the rivers of excrement seeping out from the city.
She kept sailing, staying aloft as long as she could, clearing the vile, reeking streams and fast approaching a barren hill. She tried to get more lift, hoping for a thermal, but came down hard in the dirt, tumbling on her side. She lay there, immobile, the flash of the explosion imprinted on her retinas, playing itself over again on the dark vault of the sky.
Finally she pulled off her goggles, and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Through the amber glow of the shield, she could see the fire atop the building. She lay there, watching burning debris cascade down the side of the edifice and drop out of sight behind the retaining wall.
“Astoria . . .” she whispered into the night.
For a long time she remained there, feeling the cold dirt against her face, watching the fire burn. Then the hole in the shield flickered and sealed.
Her PRD beeped, and Raven’s face appeared. “Are you out?” he asked.
She couldn’t answer. Her voice had left her.
Then another call came in. Gordon’s face flashed on her display. “You get out okay, kiddo? I’m waiting to come get you.”
She swallowed, finally reaching a hand up. She sent him her coordinates, then lay back in the dirt.
In the city, the fire raged on.
Chapter 25
In Sanctuary City, H124 sprinted to Felix’s office. She handed him the extractor tool, hoping that it hadn’t gotten fried when Astoria had been hit with the flash burster. Immediately getting to work, he shut off the device’s transmission. Delicately, while she watched, he placed the extractor tool against Dirk’s skull. A thin, snaking arm came out, latching onto the sphere and pulling it out.
The doctor dropped the sphere into a metal dish and sighed, shoulders slumped. She looked to the display with Dirk’s vitals. They were stable. The medpod repaired the hole left by the extractor.
“Will he be okay?” she asked.
Felix turned to face her through the window. “He’ll need a few days of rest. But yes.”
Running footsteps drew her attention down the hall. Byron rounded the corner, boots thumping as he ran. “H! Tried to meet you out on the airstrip, but they said you’d taken off running. How is he?” He stopped in front of the window. She couldn’t look at him. “He’s going to be okay,” she said, with a sore throat.
Byron glanced around. “Where’s Astoria? Can’t believe she’d miss this.”
H124 turned her back to him.
She felt his warm hand on her shoulder. “What is it?”
The lump in her throat was so painful she could barely speak. “She didn’t make it.”
“What?” He sounded incredulous. “But she . . . she can’t be gone.”
“I’m sorry.” H124 pulled away, and hastened down the hall. She took the lift to the surface, and walked out into the night. The moon was almost full, lighting the forest in silver.
She sat down at the base of a tree, drew her knees up to her chest, and let herself cry. Insects filled the night air with their song. Bats darted by, their translucent wings silhouetted against the moonlit sky.
When the lift door opened, Raven appeared, the wind catching his long hair. He tucked it behind his ears, spotting her by the tree.
He sat beside her, letting silent companionship drown out the tension. “Byron told me about Astoria.”
She met his eyes in the dark. He lifted his arm, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around her. “Good people have lost their lives in this fight,” he told her. “But she saved her brother, and now you’ve saved countless more.” She looked up at him. “Orion detonated the nuclear weapon. He thinks it’ll be enough to nudge the fragment off course, but he says it’s going to be close. Now we just have to wait.”
“And the big one?” she asked.
“Rivet’s making good progress on assembling the craft. Now all we need is a bomb, and a way to launch it.”
H124 beheld the stars, a mesmerizing panorama untainted by light pollution. She could see the entire expanse of the Milky Way out here in this amazing place.
“See that collection of stars there?” Raven pointed out a pattern with a very bright white star in it, the brightest star in the sky. “We call that constellation Tłish Tsoh, or Big Snake. It’s a constellation used in healing ceremonies.” He pulled his knees up and brought his free arm around them. The night air pressed in, cold and invigorating. His breath frosted as he said quietly, “Dirk will heal now. Astoria made sure of that. She died for a purpose. Not everyone can say that.”
Raven’s PRD beeped. He brought up the comm window. Orion came into view. “This is it,” he told them. “This is going to be a very close call.”
“Want to go in?” Raven asked her.
She wiped her eyes, and nodded.
He helped her up. They returned to the lift, then headed over to Orion’s office. He had set up a simulation window and was using radar to track the fragment. “I’ve got some bad news,” he told them as they entered the small room. “It’s not going to miss. Not entirely.”
Byron, Gordon, and Rowan stood near Onyx and a host of other Rovers beside, Nimbus among them.
They watched the fragment in the simulation hit the top of the earth’s atmosphere. H124 held her breath as it dove down into the stratosphere. It skimmed along, staying high, and everyone in the room held their breath.
The fragment was streaking through the stratosphere.
Orion inhaled. “This is going to be one hell of an airblast.”
Onyx’s hands flew over her virtual keyboard. “BEC City just went down. No transmissions are coming through. It’s totally dark.”
H124 gritted her teeth as the fragment hurtled onward. Then it exited the atmosphere, shooting back out into space without making landfall.
“Wait a minute,” Onyx said. “BEC City’s back up! I’m getting a weak media stream from them. They’re okay!”
A cheer went up. H124 blinked in disbelief. They’d done it. Gordon whistled, while Raven and Rowan thrust their fists into the air. Raven let out a laugh. Orion clapped, and Onyx flopped back into her seat, exhausted.
“We did it!” Raven told H124.
H124 felt numb. Slowly the reality of what had just happened dawned on her. They had done it. They’d diverted the massive fragment. And if they could avert that one, they could reroute the main asteroid.
She thought of the forest outside, of the wildlife roaming along the grassy plain above.
It could be saved. It could all be saved.
Shattered Skies
If you enjoyed Shattered Lands, be sure not to miss the third book in Alice Henderson’s Skyfire Saga.
A Rebel Base e-book on sale October 2019.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my amazing editor, James Abbate, for his excellent work and enthusiasm for the series, and to Martin Biro for making the Skyfire Saga part of the Rebel Base imprint.
Patrick Bartlein, Professor of Geography at the University of Oregon, was incredibly helpful when it came to my climatological research that went into this novel.
Thanks to the Launchpad Astronomy Workshop at the University of Wyoming, dedicated to bringing accurate science to science fiction. The week I spent there was one of the most enjoyable of my life.
And thank you to Jason, who has solidly had my back and offered endless encouragement over the years, and to Becky, whose years-long friendship I absolutely cherish.
Meet the Author
Alice Henderson is a writer of fiction, comics, and video game material. She was selected to attend Launchpad, a NASA-funded writing workshop aimed at bringing accurate science to fiction. Her love of wild places inspired her novel Voracious, which pits a lone hiker against a shapeshifting creature in the wilderness of Glacier National Park. Her novel Fresh Meat is set in the world of the hit TV series Supernatural. She also wrote the Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels Night Terrors and Portal Through Time. She has written short stories for numerous anthologies including Body Horror, Werewolves & Shapeshifters, and Mystery Date. While working at LucasArts, she wrote material for several Star Wars video games, including Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds and Star Wars: Battle for Naboo. She holds an interdisciplinary master’s degree in folklore and geography, and is a wildlife researcher and rehabilitator. Her novel Portal Through Time won the Scribe Award for Best Novel.
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