Modified Horizon

by Ran Vant

  “Do you see it?” he asked quietly.

  “See what?”

  “Look up there through the branches.”

  Still, she saw nothing.

  She walked a little closer to Brian and followed the point of his arm.

  Then she saw it. “A floater!” she exclaimed.

  She hadn’t seen one since she arrived in the R.T. She couldn’t even remember if she had ever seen one before, in the city, or if she had just heard stories about them. From class at Pete, she knew that what she saw in the sky was only one of several such ships floating above the earth. The large gray castles rarely moved with much, if any, speed. More often, the flying fortresses hovered lazily above a city for weeks before wandering farther across the countryside or before unleashing punishment for some technological offense.

  No one could ever recall seeing a floating castle on the ground. Indeed, if it were to actually attempt to land, it appeared as if the fortress would fall over on its side on account of its pointy underside. From the ground, the underside appeared to be made of rough rock and had four peaks, like a mountain range turned upside down. About halfway up, the fortress appeared to have a horizon line where the rough rock changed to stone bricks worked smooth, laid in a fashion not unlike those of medieval Europe, long, long ago.

  “What’s it doing way out here?”

  “I dunno,” Brian nonchalantly answered.

  “We should go tell Odin,” Katherine urged. Thunder growled quietly.

  “Just cool it. Let’s watch it for a minute.”

  “But we should warn the others!”

  “What are they going to be able to do about it?”

  “We could get everyone to Mary where they’d be safe,” Katherine rolled her eyes. “That’s what the retreat is for, isn’t it?” Katherine's heart raced. The dog leaned against her leg.

  “If it’s coming for us, there’s no time to get to Mary.” Brian's heart continued to calmly pump at seventy beats per minute. “Besides, what do the gens care about us? They couldn't care less that we’re out here. Now quit talking and give me the binocs. I want to see if I can see a garg.”

  Katherine had to concede that he had a point. The gens didn’t care who was out here, so long as they weren’t building an army or playing with forbidden technology. If she were back in the city, it’s not like the gens would just annihilate a random building for no reason. Come to think of it, she had never seen a gargoyle kill a civie. Not ever.

  She relaxed a bit. Maybe, just maybe, she allowed that Brian might know what he was talking about. She scratched Thunder behind the ears and the dog visibly eased.

  Brian focused the binoculars on the floater.

  “What are you seeing?” Katherine asked.

  “It looks just like a castle. Hey, let's move to the top of the bluff. Maybe we'll get a better view.” Brian took off up the steep hill, away from the river, to the top of the bluff. The trees were thinner at the top and they could see for miles.

  At the top, Brian squinted through the binoculars.

  Katherine stumbled up the hill, completely out of breath, silently cursing the physical advantages of testosterone. At first Brian’s physical advantages were just in years lived; now, several years later, it was clearly more. “Do you see anything?”

  “No,” Brian replied. “Just looks like a floater. Wait! I see a gargoyle! Two of ‘em! They're plunging down over there... towards Miller's Place. Come on!” Brian yelled, as he took off running along the ridge towards yet a higher overlook.

  At the crest, Brian cranked up the magnification. After trying for a moment to find the guardian in the binoculars, he lowered them. “The image is too shaky; I need something to stabilize it.”

  “Rest it in the crook on that tree,” Katherine offered in between deep breaths.

  “For once, a good idea.” That was Brian's version of a compliment.

  He did as she suggested and gazed through the binoculars.

  “What's going on?” Katherine asked.

  “It looks like they are doing something with the people in Miller's. I can't tell exactly. Kinda looks like some of the kids are being looked at. They're rubbing their arms... maybe like they got stung or something. Wait. I think... I think they're taking one. Look at that! They're flying back up and taking someone with them!”

  “Let me look!” Katherine pleaded.

  “Hold on a minute. Yep. Yep. They're flying back.” Brian waited until the gargoyle almost reached the fortress before finally handing over the binoculars to Katherine. “Have a look.”

  Katherine struggled to focus the binoculars. With such powerful magnification, it was hard to hold the image of the floater in view even using the tree branch as support. But she couldn't see any gargoyles, only the fortress.

  “I can't see anything.”

  “Check Miller's Place.”

  She turned her focus to the plains, but couldn't find the small hidden settlement. “I can't see it.”

  “Here give them back to me.” Brian looked through the binoculars. “Everybody's already inside.” He handed back the binoculars, keeping track of the angle at which he held them. “Try again. What do you see?”

  “I see that patch of oaks.”

  “You need to go to the right more. About six of those patches wider.”

  “Oh. Okay. Yeah, I can just make out the dirt mounds.”

  “Yep, that's it, good ole Dumpyville. Miller's Place.” Brian looked up at the floater again. “Hey, I think I see something up there again.”

  Katherine shifted her view and found the floater in the sky. “I think I see a garg! Up there on a ledge! He's... he's holding something. Someone!”

  “He's jumped!” Brian grabbed the binoculars back. Thunder barked.

  “Hey!” Katherine tried to argue before turning back to watch the black speck fall.

  “They're taking her back!”

  “What?”

  “The girl the gargoyles took: they're bringing her back down.”

  11.

  Salvation in a Bottle

  Damien studied the vial. Such a strange compound, such a small amount. The Greendust looked exactly like it sounded: it looked like metallic dust and it was green. Simple enough in appearance and name. But what made it special was what one could do with it. He had double-checked the classified archives, and it was just like Red had said. Nobody knew how to make it anymore. But those little vials that he had found in the tunnels were going to save lives, starting with this little vial and his little life.

  The Core wasn't exactly an enemy. But they also weren't exactly on friendly terms with the Natural Human Alliance at present. The True Core was hoarding powerful information and not doing anything with it. Red and Damien were going to get at the information in that Core database and were actually going to exploit it. The NHA needed that information to fight the gens and the Core just sat on it. Well, the Organization had had enough of begging the True Core, and now they were going to take it.

  And the almost magical Greendust was going to make it easy. Nothing dispersed faster and better. If everything went according to plan, he'd be tiptoeing through a sleeping fortress rather than tossing concussion grenades. Of course, if everything always went according to plan, the spies would have already gotten the True Core database a long time ago. So Damien set aside the vial to double-check that his rail gun was in perfect working order.

  12.

  Knots

  Alaric, Lothar, and Meredith listened carefully to Brian and Katherine as they told the story.

  “So, how sure are you that they actually took someone up to the fortress?” Alaric asked.

  “Positive. It was small with long hair,” Brian said. “Those slobs in Miller's Place don't have any boys with long hair; they don't let them grow it long. Had to have been a girl or young woman.”

  Alaric and Lothar exchanged knowing looks.

  “Okay. Thanks for telling us about this. Meredith, were you going to fix some food with t
he help of these two?”

  “Yes, I think I was,” Meredith replied. “Come with me, you two. What do you feel like eating?” Brian rolled his eyes. He knew when he was being ushered out even though he had just as much right to be involved in the conversation as anyone. They would never understand him.

  **

  Alaric and Lothar discussed the issue quietly, alone.

  “If they are systematically checking known settlements, they could show up here soon,” Alaric cautioned.

  Lothar paced back and forth. “We're hidden from a lot of people here. But let's not fool ourselves: the gens aren't tricked by our set-up.”

  “We don't give them any reason to take any interest in us,” Alaric noted. “Let’s remember you’ve been here a long time and there’s been almost no signs of anyone looking for you. I don’t think it’s related to you. If we panic and scatter, we'll only draw attention to ourselves. Some scanner floating up there will figure it out, it will see an anomaly, and it will investigate.”

  “But if they do come here, and they find her...”

  “Let me think over this again. Maybe we could move a small group,” Alaric conceded. Actually, Alaric realized it made a lot of sense. Small groups left Pete all of the time. Three or four people wouldn't draw any undue attention. There was no need for everyone to flee the settlement. If they were looking for her, they might not care about the others. It was only a couple that the gens would have any interest in looking for. His first instinct was to not do anything to call attention to the settlement, the first rule of survival. But upon further reflection, he began to see some possibilities.

  “I'll take her-”

  “Definitely not,” Alaric said.

  “She's my daughter, I'll-”

  “That's exactly why you can't take her, Lothar. The chances that you are in one of their organic brains, one of those huge databases, are too great. It's almost a certainty. I mean, how could you not be? They find you and then they know they've found her. Hiding from other truds is one thing, hiding from gens is another.”

  “I don't like it,” Lothar said flatly.

  “Of course you don't like it. I don't like it. Nobody likes it. But it's the reality of the situation,” Alaric stated. “We either just hunker down here or we send a small group with her to Mary or maybe even just on an excursion into the middle of nowhere. A few days should at least allow us to determine how extensive the gargoyle search pattern is. We can get on the secure comms and do some checking with our friends. I'm for sending her away, just for a short time. Just until we can get a better idea of what's going on.”

  “I'll want to discuss it with Odin.”

  “Are you crazy, Lothar? How on earth are you going to explain it to Odin?”

  “Well, can you make it happen without Odin?” Lothar asked.

  “Easily.”

  Lothar's stomach turned in knots. He wasn't sure which way to go. It was making him sick.

  Alaric saw the pain on his friend's face. “Listen, I know you're worried. But it makes the most sense. I'll send her with Conan, Jimbo, and Dave Man. They’re the best, and trusted.”

  “I know it's probably the right thing, but I'm going to go crazy holed up here in Pete while she's gone.”

  “Lothar, buddy, who said you're sticking around here? In a few hours, you'll be going in the opposite direction.”

  13.

  Red-Faced Robots

  They were all asleep. Even the guards high up near the surface, where the air circulated and would be the freshest. There were fewer guards than Damien had expected, but every single body they came across was peacefully sleeping away. The gas had dispersed even into the far corner of the compound where Damien and his strike team made their entry, almost like the Greendust had a mind of its own and sought out the enemy in every crevice and hiding place. It was the easiest breach of a Core facility that Damien had ever experienced. And as much as Damien took a certain kind of pleasure in disintegrating things, he rather enjoyed not having to kill other natural humans, united in opposition to the gens if not in their methods and beliefs.

  The breathing hoods that the strike team wore were very uncomfortable, but the problem with Greendust was that it could be a little too effective and take out the assault team if they weren't cautious. Without the masks, the assault team would be napping, too. So the team had to deal with a little discomfort and restricted vision.

  Damien and his team made it deep in the Core's underground base before encountering their first hiccup. On level 9, they discovered that, unfortunately for the team, robots don't need to sleep.

  The first robot quizzed them about who they were and what had happened. They talked to the bot just long enough for Specialist Wu to put a rail round perfectly through the robot's comm block. But it was a networked bot and after it went offline unexpectedly, the rest of the bots weren't interested in conversation anymore. But no worries: The bots weren't dedicated combat robos and Specialist Wu had a lot more rail gun rounds.

  They were now deep in the base and here the Core defense systems were clearly not up to par. The True Core was rarely this sloppy in their work. Damien figured that the base designers thought that if anyone got this deep, it was all over anyway. The best defense was making sure that no one knew where you were and what you had. The NHA spies at least solved the first part of that defensive problem, even if they failed to get at the database itself. And Damien would soon have part two firmly in hand.

  “There it is,” Damien said through the hood.

  “Doesn't look like much,” Specialist Wu said in a muffled voice.

  “Doesn't need to,” Damien said, already working to get the most critically important data extracted. They didn't have time for it all, for the guards would not sleep forever and back-up could conceivably be on the way, but he knew how to look for the juicy stuff. And it looked like it was there.

  It was a little painful for Damien to wait for what seemed like too long as the database tap scanned the Core system and began downloading data. Would the True Corers continue to sleep peacefully? Did the networked bots not only alert each other, but an outside team? Would better robots or battle drones emerge from the shafts, park themselves on the steps, and make it impossible to climb out? Did the Core have a quick reaction combat unit in the neighborhood? With each minute watching the slow scan and download, Damien seemed to imagine increasingly worse scenarios. The rest of the team, hidden behind their chem hoods, silently watched the corridor approaches, crouched in defensive positions, guns ready at the shoulder.

  Finally, Damien was able to confirm that the most important information was downloading. After it completed and he double checked it, it wasn’t worth the risk or the time to wait for more. It’d have been nice to duplicate the whole database and surely there were other hidden gems in there somewhere, but they had gotten what they came for and a little more. No need to press their luck. “Okay team, got it. Now for the tricky part.”

  “You mean going down the stairs was the easy part?” Specialist Wu joked, knowing that getting out was the real issue all along.

  It was easier than expected for once. No battle drones crawled from the shafts. There was no quick reaction combat team. Had only the True Core humans in the base awoken, the team’s escape would have been highly in doubt, having to fight their way all the way back up or negotiate terms. However, the Greendust did its job and nobody on the True Core side was awake but the robots. And these particular robots had especially bad brains when it came to keeping the enemy in. The team fought their way out with not a human life lost, neither from the Core nor from the Natural Human Alliance. And luckily, the robots didn't feel anything, not even embarrassment.

  14.

  Shadow of the Past

  Dave Man took point. Jimbo followed far behind. Conan, rail gun over his shoulder, walked with Katherine. Thunder the Dog trailed immediately behind Katherine.

  “Where do you plan to go, Cone?” Katherine asked, having adopted long ag
o Brian's nickname for Conan. Cone wasn’t so massive as when little Clara first met him. Of course she had grown up, but he had also gotten leaner and meaner looking. Conan said it had to do with training for ranging more rather than for power. If Brian had a rival for knowledge of the wilderness, it was Cone.

  “I figure we'll follow the river north, then turn east into the hills. There are some woods there that should provide some good cover. Another thing in our favor is that there haven't been too many reports of Fanatics up that way. Even if we don’t find any game, there are some berry bushes tucked in there that should be ripe. Good eat’n.”

  The group walked on through the rolling hills in silence. They talked among each other occasionally, though too much talking too often was certainly out of the question. Human voices carried a long way in the wilderness, and the hills might conceal bandits, or worse, atics. They were disciplined and knew this wasn’t a game or a simple stroll. The dog could sense it, too.

  It was a long way to hike. They alternately zoned out in the activity of hiking, got lost in their own thoughts, or kept wary eyes on the hills until boredom once again caused their minds to wander.

  Katherine spent much of the time thinking of the time before. Of her mother. Of the city. How one day everything had suddenly changed. How she could no longer talk of her mother. How she had to change her name, how Clara had disappeared into Katherine, how her dad was slowly becoming a stranger named Lothar who had to disappear from the settlement for long periods of time. How she had to deny a past that was slowly slipping from her memory.