Alight

by Scott Sigler

“Food,” she says. She points to her mouth, her belly. “Food.”

  She’s so single-minded she doesn’t seem to understand how close we just came to getting caught. What would have happened to Barkah for hiding us?

  “Maybe I can draw the purple fruit,” she says, then moves to the fire. She flips over a sketch, picks up a piece of charcoal and starts to draw.

  That catches Barkah’s attention, makes him excited. He glances at the closed doors, then two hops take him to Spingate’s side.

  She sketches an oval. She starts to shade it in. The charcoal is messy. She’s pressing too hard, sending dust everywhere.

  She holds up the sketch for me to see. “Does this look like the purple fruit?”

  “It looks more like a turd.”

  I hold back an embarrassed laugh. When Matilda was a little girl, saying the word turd would have gotten her punished. Badly. Our father didn’t like nasty language of any kind.

  Barkah squints at the drawing. He mumbles something I don’t understand. I get the feeling he’s not impressed with Spingate’s artistic skills.

  Spingate sighs. “Let me do it again.”

  She puts the fabric back on the ground, starts to draw, hesitates, wondering how to make it look better.

  The air erupts with a boom so loud and hard that it shakes dirt down from what’s left of the steeple’s ruined ceiling. The sound echoes through the jungle even as another sound joins it, a steady roar that makes everything around me shudder.

  “Oh no,” Spingate says, then she’s up and out the doors. Barkah and I rush out behind her.

  High in the sky, a trail of white. Memories flashfire, more of Matilda’s childhood floods in, and with a wash of heartbreak, fear and despair, I recognize what it is.

  “A ship,” Spingate says. “It just entered the atmosphere, it’s coming down.” She looks at me, dread in her eyes. “It has to be the Grownups.”

  Barkah hops into the steeple.

  The twelve-year-old inside me cries out: This isn’t fair! We were so close. We’ve worked so hard, lost so much. Brewer told us there was only one shuttle; he lied.

  Barkah comes out with my spear in one hand and his musket in the other. He tosses the spear at my feet. He waves his hand outward in a gesture that needs no translation: Go away.

  Spingate shakes her head. “No, we have to learn from each other, we—”

  Barkah opens his wide mouth and roars: a grinding, hideous noise. He holds the musket in both hands, shakes it at us. He’s leaning forward, his tail out straight behind him. Open aggression looks the same on his kind as it does on ours.

  Spingate takes a step back, surprised, maybe even hurt.

  I grab her elbow, gently pull her away. “Let’s go.”

  “But why is he mad? He must have also seen our shuttle come down.”

  “Look what happened after it did,” I say. “Eight of his kind are dead because of us. We have to take Visca’s body and get back to our people. Now. Look where that ship is going.”

  She looks to the sky. The white line descends toward the horizon. It’s coming down fast.

  Whatever it is, it will land inside the city walls.

  “Maybe we should leave the body,” she says. “It’s going to slow us down.”

  “He’s going to slow us down,” I say. “Not it. We’re taking him.”

  We run around to the back of the ruined church. We each take a pole of Visca’s cart. It hurts so much to hold the pole, more to pull it, but pull it we do.

  We head for the trail, Visca’s tied-down body bouncing along behind us.

  By the time we reach the city gate, night has fallen. Spingate and I are drained. The cart is on wheels, but that didn’t make the hike through the muddy trails any easier. Raw blisters cover our palms, our fingers. My hands feel like Visca’s ghost hit them with his sledgehammer.

  We call out. Coyotl slides through the tall doors, runs to us. I wait to see Bishop come out as well, but he doesn’t. Of course not—as soon as that smoke trail arced overhead, he knew what it was and went back to protect the shuttle.

  Coyotl carries Visca’s body up onto the spider. Spingate and I join them. To think that this very machine might have been used to slaughter thousands of Springers, native beings who were guilty of nothing other than being where my kind wanted to live.

  The spider is fast. The ride is smooth, silent—no more whine. And that rear leg…it’s not dragging.

  “Coyotl, is this the same spider you rode before?”

  He beams with pride. “Borjigin fixed it. Gaston helped a little, so did Beckett, but mostly it was Borjigin.”

  It never occurred to me that we could repair the old machines. Can Borjigin fix any of the rusty ones in the nest?

  The spider sprints down the nighttime street. If not for the rhythmic clack of metal feet on stone, I wouldn’t hear anything save for the wind whipping across my face. In minutes, we’re back at the landing pad.

  A spider stands on either side of the shuttle ramp. Farrar is atop one, Bawden the other. Both of them have muskets slung over their shoulders. Borjigin is next to Bawden, doing something with the tube mounted there. Is he trying to fix the cannon?

  In front of the ramp stand twenty young circle-stars, lined up in four rows of five. They wear black coveralls and boots. The shuttle’s lights glint off the metallic thread of their Mictlan patches. Three of them hold muskets. The others hold tools, tools they will use as weapons.

  Bishop is walking up and down the rows. I can’t hear what he’s saying. From the frightened and serious expressions on the faces of those kids, I assume he’s preparing them to fight.

  Twelve-year-old warriors. They were bred for this, yet they don’t look like real soldiers. They look like dolls dressed up for war—only this time it wasn’t the Grownups who chose the outfits, it was us.

  Smith runs down the ramp, two little circle-crosses—one boy, one girl—right behind her. Spingate gets down off the spider first, then she and Smith help me descend. My hand doesn’t seem to work anymore.

  Smith takes my wrist, gently but firmly.

  “This is bad,” she says. “We need to get you in medical right away.”

  “No time,” I say, even though all I want to do is crawl into that coffin and go to sleep, wake up feeling no pain. “Can you fix my fingers here?”

  She looks at me like I’m stupid, then catches herself and again studies my hand.

  “Pokano, go to medical,” she says without looking up. “Find finger splints.”

  The little boy runs off. The girl circle-cross hovers nearby, waiting to be told what to do.

  Smith turns to Spingate, sees the stitches on her forehead.

  “You fought?”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” Spingate says.

  “Were you hurt? Did you get hit anywhere else?”

  Smith reaches for Spingate’s belly. Spingate brushes her hands away.

  “I’m fine,” Spingate says. She points up to the spider. “We have Visca’s body.”

  Smith glances at me. Maybe a touch of respect in those eyes.

  “Yilmaz, go to Deck Four,” she says. “Prepare a coffin for corpse storage. That will arrest the decomposition process until we can arrange a proper burial.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the little girl says, then sprints for the shuttle. She already knows how to work the coffins? I’ve been away from the shuttle too much. I realize I didn’t know her name—or the boy circle-cross’s name, for that matter—until this moment.

  Smith calls up to Coyotl. “Do you need help bringing Visca down?”

  “He’s heavy,” Coyotl says. “Send some circles out to help me.”

  I leave them to take care of Visca. Spingate heads into the shuttle. I walk to Bishop. He suddenly stands stiff, at attention.

  “Two spiders and twenty-one infantry ready to march,” he says, barking out the words. “We need to find the invaders and kill them before they can mount an attack on the shuttle.”

&nb
sp; Some of the little circle-stars stare straight ahead, a few watch Bishop, and the rest look at me. Some are ready to fight. Some are trying to hide their fear. If we march them out, I wonder how many of them will suffer the Grownups’ bracelets, will be blasted into pieces like El-Saffani.

  “Wait here,” I tell Bishop. “Do not march until I get back.”

  He nods once.

  I walk up the ramp, enter to confusion, to panic. O’Malley is in the coffin room, trying to calm hundreds of upset children. Aramovsky is doing the same. For once, the two of them are working together.

  People see me and start shouting suggestions: everything from abandon the city and flee into the jungle to fly back to the Xolotl and beg the Grownups to forgive us.

  I ignore these cowardly ideas and push through the crowd. O’Malley looks immensely relieved to see me. I pull him aside.

  “Bishop wants to attack,” I say.

  O’Malley nods. “Of course he does. It’s all he knows.”

  “You don’t think we should?”

  The words are out of my mouth before I realize why I’m asking him; for all of my issues with O’Malley, I instinctively seek his counsel.

  O’Malley thinks for a moment. “Maybe we should attack, but not yet. We need to know exactly what came down. How many people? What do they want? Could be Grownup circle-stars come to wipe us out and recover the shuttle, or just Matilda, here to convince you to join her. What if it’s Brewer? And what if the ship isn’t even from the Xolotl?”

  “Of course it is,” I snap. “Where else could it be from?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. We don’t know anything yet, and that’s my point. To use Bishop’s favorite word, we need to reconnoiter before we march our people into danger.”

  I look at the people packed into the coffin room. Many are crying. Aramovsky is telling them to stay calm, that the gods will protect them.

  O’Malley leans in close to do that thing I now despise, to whisper.

  “Tell everyone you’re going to find out what’s going on,” he says. “People are panicking. They need to know someone is doing something, even if you don’t know what that something is yet.”

  His hot breath on my ear, on my neck. Shivers ripple across my skin. I’m surprised and disgusted with myself—how can my body react to him at a time like this?

  “Go get Bishop,” I say. “And his little circle-stars. Tell Bawden and Farrar to stay on their spiders as lookouts.”

  O’Malley slides through the crowd. Moments later, Bishop and his “soldiers” filter in, find places among the scared, crying, noisy kids.

  My broken fingers scream at me. With my good hand, I whip my spear against a coffin three times, bam-bam-bam.

  “Shut your godsdamned mouths!”

  Silence. All eyes look to me.

  There is no point in pretending we’re not in trouble. As quickly as I can, I tell them about Barkah and the Springers, how there is real hope we can communicate and find a cure for the red mold, but right now we need to deal with the most dangerous problem first.

  “A ship came down,” I say. “We don’t know how many people were in it. If we march out blindly, we leave the shuttle less protected. Bishop, myself and a few more will go find where the ship landed. No one else leaves the landing pad. While I’m gone”—I stare straight at Aramovsky—“O’Malley is in charge.”

  Aramovsky nods. “You’re leaving Spingate here this time, aren’t you?”

  I scan the crowd, see her in back. She and Gaston are holding each other. She stares at Aramovsky, suspicious he mentioned her name.

  There’s no need to put her in danger again. I shouldn’t even go myself, but I can’t wait for people to report back to me—I need to know, and I need to know now.

  “Correct,” I say. “Spingate stays here.”

  Aramovsky smiles, spreads his arms, turns as he talks. “A wise choice,” he says, to everyone rather than just to me. “Because now we’re not just fighting for our own lives, we’re fighting for those that come after us.”

  Spingate’s eyes go wide. She shakes her head, silently imploring Aramovsky to stop talking.

  He doesn’t.

  “We must congratulate Spingate, and Gaston as well”—Gaston rushes toward Aramovsky, pushing past people, stumbling over kids—“because she is pregnant.”

  A hush falls over the coffin room.

  Gaston stops cold, just a few steps from Aramovsky.

  All eyes turn to Spingate.

  She sees Smith standing by the shuttle door, points at her. “I’ll deal with you later.”

  Smith is clearly rattled. She glances from Spingate to Aramovsky, shaking her head at him as if to say, How could you?

  Spingate gathers herself. She stands straight and tall. Despite her bruised face, the angry line of stitches on her forehead, her muddy, filthy hair, she is confident and proud—she has never looked more impressive.

  “It’s true,” she says. “When Doctor Smith fixed my elbow, the med-chamber scanned me, found out I was a few days pregnant.”

  Smith must have told Aramovsky. In confidence, I’m sure, but he is so slimy, he was probably waiting for the right moment to use that information.

  This news, it’s overwhelming. And Spingate is my friend…why didn’t she tell me?

  The way she changed, became so serious, fighting to get her way when before she would go along with whatever I wanted to do. The things she said…

  Our children will inherit Omeyocan. What kind of a planet do you want them to have? One of war, or one of peace?

  I should say something to her, to everyone, but there are no words.

  Aramovsky smiles wide, raises his hands, expertly commanding the room’s attention.

  “It has begun,” he says. “Our children and our children’s children are going to fill this planet. We are the chosen people. Omeyocan is our birthright. We will defend it from the Springers and anything else that tries to take it from us.” He looks at me. “Go, Em. Go and find out what new threat we face.”

  Spingate is pregnant. And, somehow, Aramovsky managed to turn that into him ordering me to do what I just said I was going to do. That’s why he chose this moment, he knew it would stun me, he knew he’d be able to make himself look like a leader.

  My eyes seek out the one person who always makes everything easier.

  “Bishop, let’s go find that ship.”

  Gaston was so mad I thought he might attack Aramovsky. I had Farrar watch them while I sent Beckett to use the pilothouse map, see if he could figure out where the new ship landed.

  It landed near the Observatory.

  We ride Coyotl’s spider. Five of us are aboard: me, Coyotl, Bishop, Bawden and a young, brown-haired circle-star named Muller. He’s as tall as I am; I wonder how big he’ll get in the next few years.

  My fingers still hurt, although not as much. Smith put some bits of metal on them, which helped, and poked them with a needle, which helped even more. I glared at her the entire time—she refused to meet my eyes.

  The clouds that block the stars are starting to break up. Twin moons cast enough light to see some detail of the vine-covered streets, the dark buildings that rise up all around us.

  On foot, this trip took us half the day. Atop the sprinting spider, it doesn’t even take half an hour.

  As we drive, Bishop plans our strategy.

  “Em, you and Muller will stay on the spider,” he says. “Muller is a good shot. We’ll stop a few blocks from where the ship went down. Bawden and I will continue on foot. I’ll go left, she’ll go right, we’ll observe the ship from the flanks. Coyotl, once we get out, you wait one minute, then approach the ship straight on, but move slow, so the spider’s feet don’t make too much noise. Stay a block or so away, close enough so you can rush in if you hear gunfire.”

  All around me, heads nod.

  “What if it’s Grownups?” Bawden says. “Can we shoot them?”

  Bishop shakes his head. “Don’t fire unles
s fired upon. Stay low, stay out of sight. We only have three muskets—if there are four or more Grownups, and they’re all armed, we’re dead even if all three of us kill on our first shot.”

  The spider slows, stops. Coyotl steers the machine into the deep shadows of a smaller road.

  “The ship is two blocks due east,” he says.

  Bishop and Bawden hop over the side, hit the ground and vanish into the shadows.

  Coyotl moves the spider forward, but much slower. I can barely hear the pointed feet touching down. We travel one creeping, slow block, then I see it.

  The ship looks…lumpy. Moonlight plays down on smoke rising up from a long path behind it. Vines smolder, some even flickering with tiny flames.

  I don’t know what to make of that ship. Our shuttle is streamlined, something born to slice through the air. This ship? It is a quarter the size and has no sleekness. Weird shapes stick out. I see rivets and bumps. Some parts look melted. Smoke—or maybe steam—rises up. A few spots are actually glowing, like metal heated in a fire. The machine clinks and clonks, as if someone is tapping on it with tiny hammers.

  Moonlight intensifies. The cloud cover is breaking. I see something moving near the ship. It’s not a Grownup, not a Springer…it is a person, like us.

  The wind picks up. I hear vine leaves start to rattle.

  That person…it can’t be…

  I grab Coyotl’s shoulder.

  “Move in,” I say. “Right now!”

  “What? But Bishop said—”

  “Now! Go!”

  The spider lurches forward so fast Muller and I grab at the protective ridge to stop from falling backward. The silent machine streaks in with nothing more than a rapid click-click-click of pointed feet.

  The person hears us coming, turns.

  As the spider slows and stops, the last of the clouds blow clear. Moonlight streams down on a long-sleeved white shirt, a red and black plaid skirt, pale skin…and wispy blond hair.

  The girl looks up at me.

  “Hello, Em,” Bello says. “I escaped.”

  It can’t be. She’s gone. Bello is gone.

  Bishop rushes in from the left, slinging his musket. He engulfs Bello in a hug. She laughs and winces, hugs him back, her feet dangling.