Noa stopped just beyond the inner air lock door, stunned. “Why are they doing that?” she asked Haydn, raising her voice to be heard above the noise.
He turned to face her. “I feel like doing it, too,” he said. He pulled her neck dam over her head and dropped it to the floor. “Only not for the same reason.” He kissed her, right there in front of everyone.
The cheering grew louder.
Chapter Fifteen
Hayden was forced to stop kissing her. They were interrupted by medics who insisted on checking them over; the Captain who wanted to congratulate them; Magorian, who shocked Noa by kissing her cheek; then everyone in the workshop, who wanted to scream their excitement at them.
They stripped the suits in the suit room. Even there, Ségolène and Cai insisted on helping, as they exclaimed over the stars they had seen, the size of the ship and how long before they could go out there?
Haydn kept hold of Noa’s hand as they walked back to the workshop. On the way, guards, project people and Bridge personnel spoke to them.
“I had no idea there were so many people working on the Bridge,” Noa muttered. “Where did they all come from?”
“Most of them are your people,” Haydn pointed out and kissed her again.
Anselm met them at the door to the workshop. He barred the way, his arms crossed. “Nuh-uh,” he said shortly. “You two are done for the day. Go home. Celebrate. Only…don’t go to either of your registered addresses.”
Haydn’s hand tightened its grip on hers.
Lizette looked over Anselm’s shoulder. “Use my place,” she said. “It’s coded to your prints, both of you. I know Dennis will come straight here when he’s done at the Institute.”
“Thanks,” Haydn said.
Lizette waved them away. “Go on. I have work to do. I wanna build my suit.”
* * * * *
Even as they traversed the Aventine, heading for the residential section, people called out their congratulations, or patted their shoulders or shook their hands. The excitement on the Bridge was replicated across the ship. Everyone’s face was glowing with emotions that Noa wasn’t sure she could name.
“It’s pride,” Haydn told her, as he opened the door to Lizette and Dennis’ apartment.
“They’re proud of us?” Noa asked, astonished.
“They’re proud of themselves.” He shut the door behind them and drew her to him. “Everyone, in one way or another, was a part of the project. They feel like they are a tiny bit responsible for its success.” He took her face in his hands. “And they’re right.”
He kissed her and Noa wrapped her arms around his neck and hung on as her body seemed to melt in response. Haydn was kissing her in a way he had never done before. It was heady. It was making her tremble.
He let her go.
“Don’t stop!” she cried.
He shook his head. “I have no intention of stopping.” He pulled her to the sofa and lowered himself over her. His body was hot and big and deliciously heavy over hers.
His hand slid under her hip and he looked at her steadily. “Thank you,” he whispered.
She knew he was thanking her for getting him outside, for letting him see what his father denied existed. Haydn was thanking her for justifying a lifetime of defying him, no matter what the cost.
Her eyes pricked hard with tears. The old need to defend herself, to hide the truth and her vulnerability pushed at her. It would be easier to say she had done it all for herself. It would be easier to pretend Haydn hadn’t utterly changed her life. That was what the old Noa would have done. The old Noa could not have dreamed of doing what she had just done an hour ago. So she drew in a breath and said as firmly as her weak and trembling voice could manage, “You’re welcome.”
Haydn smiled. It was a heated expression. “Finally.” He kissed her again. This time, he didn’t stop and it was wonderful.
* * * * *
Somewhere during the next few hours they moved into the bedroom, where there was more room and a soft mattress that could hold both of them.
Noa used her credits to print food, not willing to stand about in the kitchen and waste time cooking, although she knew neither Lizette nor Dennis would mind. She just didn’t want to be away from Haydn for too long.
Once they had eaten, they went back to bed. Haydn seemed inexhaustible, although Noa did not seem to tire of touching him, either. Her energy was boundless.
Even in quieter moments, she rested with her head on his shoulder, while she stroked his chest and arm and any other part of him she could reach.
“I feel like a different person,” she confessed. “Coming back in from outside, nothing looks exactly the same as it did before.”
Haydn kissed her forehead. “Mmm.”
“You feel that, too?”
He shifted her off him, gently. Then he propped himself up so he was looking at her. “It’s what let me be here.” He put his hand on the sheet between then. “With you.”
She nodded. “You knew it would be like that all along, didn’t you? That’s why you…it’s why you waited.”
He smiled, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Fear had something to do with it, too.”
“You feared me?”
“About as much as you were afraid of me.” He frowned. “I wasn’t afraid of you. Just what you represented.”
“Risk,” she guessed, for fear of rejection had stopped her from acting all this time, too.
“Hope,” he said gently. He stroked her cheek. “You were hope. I’d never had hope before. I thought it would disappear, that something would happen to make it go away. Lots happened, yet you stuck around and eventually I realized you weren’t leaving. It took me a while. You had to change my entire world and dump me on my head to do it, but I got it, finally.”
She smiled. “You’re welcome.”
He didn’t smile back. “You’re a force of nature, Noa. You know that, don’t you? You’ve ripped through this ship and changed it, more than any meteor could. There are more people than me lined up to thank you for that and they can all wait their turn. I’m here and I’m not leaving. Not for a good long while.” He swallowed. “That is, if you don’t mind.”
Her heart jumped. “I wouldn’t have done any of it without you. You have to stay.”
He lay back down and pulled her over the top of him. She felt his hot flesh all the way down to her toes and his heart beating against her.
“I was hoping you’d see it that way,” he said gravely and kissed her again.
* * * * *
It would take weeks for more suits to be completed. In the meantime, Lizette’s list of volunteers more than doubled. “I think everyone on the ship is on the list,” Lizette told Noa. “We need crews anyway, don’t we?”
Noa put Lizette in charge of recruiting while Hadyn and a small group of structural engineers planned the replating process. The engineers had to listen to Haydn, because most of the work and principals they understood were useless, outside. It made for some interesting meetings, as they struggled to understand why something as simple as stacking plasteel sheets ahead of the plating crews wouldn’t work.
While Haydn dealt with engineers, Noa took time to find new quarters for the new Institute. They could not work on the Bridge forever, yet large, open buildings with lots of room for heavy equipment were not a feature of the ship.
She took Haydn and Anselm with her to show them what she did find.
Anselm looked around the open terrace between the Second and Third Walls, puzzled. “Here?” he said, staring at pedestrians as they sauntered past.
“I got the idea from the Midnight Garden and the markets in the Aventine,” Noa said. “It’s right that the Institute be in the Capitol, Anselm. That’s where most of us come from.”
“But…here? It’s in the middle of nowhere.” He looked up and down the terrace. “It’s out in the open.”
Haydn grinned. “This is not out in the open,” he assured Anselm. “Nowhere on the
ship is.”
“We’ll have to build shelters from the rain and some waist-high barriers to keep pedestrians and the curious away from the dangerous equipment. That’s all. Even the long, narrow area here will suit the work flow we’ve developed. The workbenches will fit in perfectly.”
Anselm rubbed his head, doubt in his face.
“This is the middle of the Capitol, not the middle of nowhere,” she added. “It’s exactly where we should work.”
“Among thieves and vandals, gangs and crime,” Anselm said darkly.
“Haydn told me that everyone was proud of what we’re doing, that they all feel as though they’re a part of it. This way, they will be a part of it. If everyone sees what we are doing, if they feel involved, they won’t upset the work in any way. Everyone knows how vital it is.”
Anselm let out a heavy breath. “Okay. I guess. I think it’s weird and more than a bit silly, only I thought that about making jewelry, too.”
After Anselm went back to the Bridge, Noa coaxed Haydn onto a spatula, which lifted them up to the top level of the Third Wall. The slice apartment it stopped in front of looked similar to every other apartment on the Wall. Someone had colored the façade not so long ago, making it a dark green.
Noa unlocked the door and Haydn stepped inside curiously.
The interior of the apartment was the surprise. It spread out over three slices, a spacious, light-filled space—for the daylights were close overhead and there were four windows along the front of it.
“I registered it yesterday,” Noa told him. “I gave up my slice on the Fifth wall.”
“It’s nice,” Haydn said cautiously.
“It’s mine,” Noa corrected. “No one would know you are here, not in any official capacity and there’s more than enough room for the two of us.”
Haydn looked around the big front room while her heart pattered uneasily. Then he looked at her, his gaze steady. “You’re fearless, aren’t you? Straight ahead, full speed, no brakes.”
“Fearless is the last thing I am,” Noa assured him. “I threw up in the Captain’s office, remember? I’m afraid of my own shadow. Only this…it’s for you and that makes it different.”
“For me?”
“So you can stop hiding.”
He hung his head. “You gotta know that’s probably not going to happen while he’s still out there.”
She put her hand on his arm. “Hiding? I know. This is almost out, though.”
Hayden picked up her hand. “You registered the address yesterday?”
“This morning.”
“Then this really is yours?”
“Ours,” she amended.
He nodded toward one of the doors at the back of the apartment. “That’s the bedroom?”
“That one,” Noa said, pointing.
He pulled her toward it.
It was while they were making love in the empty bedroom that Farnell Acardi’s Cavers staged their final, conclusive bid for legitimacy. While dozens of their brethren held back people with guns and cudgels, the Cavers burrowed into the hull, determined to tear it open and reveal the cave beyond and prove once and for all that Destination was an illusion to soothe the gullible.
* * * * *
The hand-held terminal that Noa had been forced to start carrying everywhere with her beeped and chirped with loud alert notifications.
Haydn cursed and shifted away from her.
Noa reached for her jacket, where the terminal was stashed and dug it out. Her annoyance shifted to horror. “Oh, hell….” She held the terminal out to Haydn.
He dropped his shirt and read it. His expression was bleak as he looked at her. “My father is not that stupid. He couldn’t be.”
“He’s not stupid at all. He really does believe, though.” She picked up her coveralls and put them on. “If someone truly believes we’re sitting in a cave, then opening up the side of the ship to demonstrate that makes perfect, simple sense. The broadcast of you walking on the outside of the ship must have pushed him into this.” She looked up at him. “Another illusion, this time waving his son in front of him, just to add to the insult.”
“We have to stop them,” Haydn said. “If they open up a big enough hole, it will rip the ship apart. Where are they?”
“Right here in the Capitol. At the back of the markets.”
Haydn’s expression shifted oddly. “You mean where I was that night we met? When they were kicking the shit out of me?”
Noa shook her head. “I met an angry stranger that night. I met you much later.”
He kissed her, then pulled his jacket on.
* * * * *
Sweat prickled uncomfortably over Haydn’s body as they hurried through the Capitol marketplace. He could already hear the shouting and noise behind the market stalls and people were hurrying away from the market, glancing back over their shoulders with frightened looks.
A phalanx of Bridge guards was jogging in file around the far corner of the Midnight Garden, heading for the back wall of the ship. Haydn picked up speed.
“I can’t keep up!” Noa protested. “You go ahead! Go!”
Haydn let her hand loose and ran. He rounded the same corner as the guards and angled past them, for they were only jogging. Ahead, he could see the line of Cavers standing guard. They were all armed with various weapons. There were guns, which were dangerous not just because they could kill a human. The old fashioned percussion bullets the older guns fired could drill through the hull of the ship, too, causing slow leaks that were mostly hidden and not noticed until people died of asphyxiation. That was why even the Bridge guards didn’t carry guns.
Where had his father got them?
Behind the sentry line of Cavers, more than a dozen more of them were digging at the wall with sledgehammers and pry bars. From what he now knew about the hull and the layers beneath it, Haydn could see that they had barely dug through the inner lining so far.
He slowed, checking faces and bodies.
His father wasn’t here.
“Haydn Forney!” The Caver who stood at the front of the guard line pointed at him. “You are an unbeliever!” The man’s blue eyes were wild, his hair unkempt. His clothing was tattered. He was clearly one of the people who found Farnell Acardi’s faith a comfort, for it explained every misery in their lives, taking any responsibility for their misfortunes away from them own shoulders and placing it on “them”—the instigators of the conspiracy.
Haydn recognized him, although it had been many years since he had seen the man in his father’s apartment. Dhaval Bull. Haydn couldn’t remember a time when the man had not been complaining. His entire life was an insult to his sensibilities.
It was fitting that Bull was the one leading this insanity, now.
“Damn right I’m an unbeliever,” Haydn shot back. “You’ll kill everyone on this ship if you persist in this.”
“Everyone’s faith will be restored, once we succeed!” Bull cried.
“There won’t be anyone left to believe, you moron! Did my father put you up to this?”
Bull smiled. “Your father understands that truth is the ultimate answer.”
There were even more Cavers moving through the sentry lines, heading for the place where the stronger Cavers were peeling back the plasteel lining, using brute strength. As Haydn looked, the corner of plasteel they were hauling on snapped off with a deep, loud crack. It hit the floor with another thud that reverberated through Haydn’s feet.
The people pushing through the lines were carrying an assortment of bags and packs, carryalls and duffel bags. With an impact that made his breath whoosh from him, Haydn realized what was really happening here. He looked Dhaval Bull. “You’re not looking for proof at all. You’re leaving.”
Pity filled Bull’s face. “There’s still time to change your mind, Haydn. Your father would want us to take you with us.”
Haydn looked around. The Bridge guards were lined up in front of the sentry line now. They weren’t tackl
ing them directly.
Bernice Daly was leading them. She was talking to her terminal, probably getting permission to break up the Cavers with force, for nothing else would stop them.
“You fools,” Haydn railed at Dhaval Bull, anger making his voice project. “The Bridge guards will take your heads off in about sixty seconds. Or the vacuum you expose us to will do the job. Either way, you’re done.”
Bull nodded. “Farnell said force would be necessary to defend ourselves.” He pulled out an ancient handgun from his jacket and held it up. “We are prepared.”
Bernice waved her guards forward and they leapt at the sentries, their sticks and batons raised.
Feared closed down Haydn’s throat, squeezing hard, making it difficult to breathe. If even one of those old guns was fired, it would be a disaster.
Then the gravity went out.
Haydn flailed with his hands as his feet rose. The movement made his feet rise even more quickly, flipping him over. All around him, the guards and the Cavers were doing the same helpless rolls, their arms flapping, their feet kicking uselessly. There were shouts of fear. Panic.
Yet the fighting had stopped. So had any attempt to dig through the wall, for all the tools and the people doing the digging were drifting, meters away from the hull, trying to right themselves.
Haydn waved his hand sideways and he turned the other way, as planned. Now he could see the far corner of the Capitol, where it met the Field of Mars. There was a gravity generator there, hiding in plain sight. The lid was open.
Noa was hovering over the box, held to it by the tether, one of the generator crystals in her hand. In the other was her terminal.
Haydn laughed.
Bernice Daly was only a few meters away from Haydn and drifting closer. She rolled in a slow cartwheel, then straightened herself out with hand motions, learning quickly. She glared at Haydn. “How in hell are we supposed to round up the Cavers?” she demanded. “We can’t restore gravity now. Some of them are already up by the roof and it’s a fatal drop from there.”
Haydn looked up carefully. The Cavers who had panicked the most, who had thrashed about wildly, were now bumping up near the roof. It was a long way down from there.
Junkyard Heroes Page 16
