Aurora

by Julie Bertagna

  The traders seem to bellow into thin air but the godkins embedded in their skin are relaying to their Trade Lords a double catastrophe – not only are the businesses they sunk their wealth into still vanished from the ether, now the Noos itself has disappeared.

  Fox grabs Pandora’s hand and they race through the crowded work pods towards a hidden door he remembers in the mirror walls.

  ‘Trillions of Noo$dollars!’ a purple-cheeked trader is hollering. ‘All gone – and now there’s no Noos!’

  A woman stares aghast at the data walls. ‘But I – I can’t explain, Lord Edin. It’s just gone.’

  The cacophony of disbelief almost drowns out the sound of the bombs outside.

  ‘Great work, Surgent Fox,’ Pandora whispers.

  ‘What,’ says an appalled voice, ‘is that?’

  The smile dies on Pandora’s face as a group of young traders recoil from her as they might if they found a swamp dragon scuttling through their shining cathedral. A horrified woman looks her up and down and screams. Fox pulls Pandora away through the chaotic crowd until they are face to face with themselves in the mirrored wall.

  Pan stares at her reflection with a shattered look.

  The dead alerts of the trade screens spark in her eyes and on the scaly armour of her tunic. Amid the crystal brightness of New Mungo and its groomed sky citizens her sleek-haired skin, webbed feet and fingers, even the grimed features of her fiercely angelic face, are dangerously alien.

  Get her out of here fast, thinks Fox.

  ‘David Stone,’ he snaps at his reflection and sees the flicker of the eye-scanner behind the mirror.

  Behind him, a young trader approaches, his eyes fixed on Pan, the blade of a skate boot aimed at her head. Fox sees the zapeedo blade flash as the concealed door slides open in the wall. He yanks Pan through. The door shuts and the tumult of the cybercath cuts dead.

  They are safe. For the moment. Unless the violent young Noostrader has security clearance for the Nux.

  Luckily, the private door in the mirrored wall stays sealed.

  Steerpike couldn’t believe it. Though Fox vanished from New Mungo over fifteen years ago, his identity was never erased from the security systems. No one ever knew what happened to young David Stone. How could they have guessed? He was assumed dead, said Steerpike, though there was no body to be found. But instead of instant deletion, upon death, his identity has lingered in the system like an electronic ghost.

  Did they forget to delete him? Or did his parents hope that one day he would return as mysteriously as he disappeared?

  They have entered a softly lit inner corridor. Deep in this hidden area beyond the cybercath are the city Guardians’ chambers of power. Fox remembers it all as if he has never been away.

  Pan hisses a warning. He sees a flash, like a red alert. A Nux guard has appeared among the mirrors. Out of the corner of his eye, Fox sees the pincer movement of yet more guards in the empire’s scarlet jackets.

  The stun blast hits him like a giant’s punch. Too late, he realizes the mirrors have tricked him into seeing six guards where there’s only one – and that one was right behind him. His legs crumple; he slumps to the floor. With a groan of despair he sees that his ghost might have been left in the system as a trap, in case he ever dared to return.

  The ancient armour in his flak-jacket has saved his upper body from the blast but his legs are dead. They might as well be chopped off.

  ‘Been stunned,’ he replies to Kitsune’s frantic query on the soundwave. ‘No legs. I need back-up, fast.’

  ‘Surgents are heading to the Nux but there are battles all over the city – hold on, Fox.’

  ‘Too late.’

  Kitsune groans now. The guard advances, his eyes flicking from Fox to Pan

  ‘What – what are you?’ he gasps, as if he has stumbled across creatures from another world

  For a split second Fox’s heart leaps as the nervous young guard fumbles and drops the stun gun. But now he grips another gun, a laser, and takes aim at Fox’s head.

  ROGUE SURGE

  ‘Run!’

  Pan ignores Fox’s order.

  She’s taken one of the medieval weapons from her belt and whirls the chain around her head. On the end of the chain is the Morning Star, a vicious little ball of spikes that can strangle a dragon, the deadly star embedding in the beast’s throat as the loaded chain wraps around its jaw.

  A tornado of Morning Stars seems to fly around the corridor, the mirrors multiplying the spiked metal ball into a whirling storm. The guard panics, ducks and runs to escape the onslaught – but his confusion takes him right into Pan’s stun blast. He gives a strangled scream and drops to the ground as the spikes sink into his neck and the loaded chain lassoes around his throat.

  Pan’s skateboard clatters on to the floor. She heaves Fox on to it and retrieves her spiked ball and chain from the unconscious guard. Fox lies on his stomach and grips the edges of the skateboard, his stunned legs a dead weight.

  ‘The lift,’ he gasps, pointing. ‘Over there! Red button . . .’

  Shouts and footsteps resound in the corridors as Pan pushes him towards the lift. She slams her fist on the red crystal button. A door opens in the wall and Pan pushes Fox into the lift capsule. Then she rushes back out.

  ‘Get in,’ Fox yells.

  She is dragging the unconscious guard towards the lift. She hauls him in and the lift doors slide shut as a flash of red-jacketed guards appear at the edge of the corridor.

  ‘How long till you get your legs back?’ Pan demands breathlessly.

  Fox wiggles his toes. Feels a tingle as the lift speeds upward.

  ‘Not long – but the second I do, you’re going to use your legs and get to the top of the towers. Plans have changed,’ he responds, as she argues. ‘Get to a rooftop and wait for the ships. There’s something I have to do on my own.’

  ‘Ship? Since when was I going on a ship?’ Pan is searching the young guard’s jacket, having already pocketed his gun. She pulls a second gun from his belt and hands it to Fox. ‘You need me. I just saved you. We’re fighting for this city. You said we’d be king and queen of the empire once the Guardians were gone, that we’d change everything. How can we abandon all that?’

  ‘Not king and queen, Pan, I never said that. Not rulers. A different kind of guardian. But that was before I found Lily. What do you expect me to do? Abandon her?’ he retorts, torn between duty and desire; what he should do and what he must. ‘It’s not only our fight. Others can take over here. I can still be a global force once we’ve rebooted the Noos. We can still do what we said, make a new kind of world – just do it from the Northlands.’

  He grinds to a halt, overwhelmed by guilt, by the enormity of abandoning the plan he has worked towards for years. Then Lily’s face flashes up in his mind’s eye and he hears her last, desperate cry and his decision becomes clear and pure. His daughter needs him. Nothing else matters more, nothing in the world.

  ‘Maybe I don’t want to go North,’ says Pan sullenly. ‘Maybe I want to do what we always said we’d do, right here.’

  She works fast as she speaks, binding the guard’s hands with a rope from her weapons belt. The lift stops and the door slides open. Guns ready, they listen to brutal echoes from somewhere deeper in the Nux. But the corridor outside is clear.

  ‘Pan, what happened in the cybercath –’

  Fox staggers to his feet, struggling to make his dead legs work. They tingle fiercely, as if embedded with spiky Morning Stars. The near-attack in the cybercath convinced him that Pan would not be safe here.

  ‘They looked at me like I was a – a snake. Maybe they’d think I was a freak in the Northlands too!’ Fox’s heart turns over as Pan’s voice breaks. ‘So where am I supposed to go?’

  ‘You’re coming North with me.’

  Fox leans against a wall and pulls a folded paper from a pocket of his armoured jacket – the map of the city he has drawn in charcoal to show the network of sky tunnels wi
th the cybercathedral and the Nux like a fat spider at the heart of a great web.

  ‘Look.’ Fox trails his finger across the map. ‘Each of the sky tunnels leads to a tower. Elevator shafts lead to the roofs. They all say No Access – ignore that. The tok-checks are all set up for you.’

  In his mind’s eye Fox sees air fleets from the east surging across the globe, each one headed for a sky city.

  ‘I want to stay with you.’ Pandora’s mouth trembles. ‘Why can’t I come? What is it you’re going to do?’

  ‘I need to fix a broken bridge,’ says Fox. ‘I need to do it alone. Go and help the boat refugees find their way to the roofs. They should be battling up through the towers now. Keep yourself safe and head for the top of Aspen Tower.’ His grandfather named the first towers of his New World after the lost trees of the Earth; Fox only realized this when he explored the old books. He shows Pan the route to Aspen, the northernmost tower, on the map. ‘I’ll meet you there.’

  Kitsune is muttering on the soundwave, asking him what’s happening, where is he, what’s he doing, why’s he heading for Aspen? Fox extinguishes his old friend with a tug on the earplug and gives the connector to Pandora.

  ‘Promise?’ Pan holds his gaze.

  ‘Promise. Kitsune will keep you right.’

  ‘Because you need me,’ Pan murmurs, doubtful still. ‘You do.’

  Her green eyes burn into him. Then she slams her skateboard on the ground and speeds off.

  The city sways and shakes in ocean-blasts and bombs. Fox staggers through pillared corridors, stamping the last numbness from his tingling legs, imagining the towers and sky tunnels as giant trees in a global storm.

  The thunder of feet makes him halt. A gun in each hand, Fox flattens himself behind a pillar. Guards rush past. One trips and sprawls on the ground. Fox takes aim but the guard lies stunned. Another man crashes down, then another, and Fox sees the rogue guards at the tail end stun-blasting their comrades.

  His spirit leaps. It’s really happening! The Surge is bursting into the cities and now the secret Surgents inside the empire are breaking loose. Maybe this is his true legacy – to break the grip of the Guardians for the new imagineers. There must be other young dreamers in these cities who will rise from all this with a new sense of the world, of what might be possible, what could be . . .

  Adrenalin speeds him round a last bend in the corridor towards the private chambers that were once his grandfather’s and now belong to his father, Mungo Stone.

  The last time he entered these chambers he was with Mara. Hours later, she escaped on a ship and he crashed down into the netherworld, a teenage dreamer who planned to change the world. How could he have known how many hard years it would take, how much he must lose before he returned?

  Fox stuns the two guards on duty outside the chamber and steps over the crumpled bodies.

  He pulls out his laser gun to disable the tok-check and his eyes fall upon the blood-red jackets of the guards with the dark lilies, the emblem of the empire, emblazoned at their hearts. A bolt of emotion hits like the gentlest stun-blast at the memory of the old woman who lived in a tree, the ancient guardian who showed Fox how to survive in the netherworld and guided him as he sowed the first seeds of his revolution: the Lily his grandfather once cast down into the netherworld and years later, ridden by guilt, enshrined as the emblem of the empire; the same Lily remembered by Mara in their daughter’s name.

  The door to his father’s chamber slides open with barely a whisper and Fox steps inside.

  THE GHOST OF CALEDON

  An enormous blue globe floats in the middle of the room.

  Inside the slow-spinning lumen stands a man, engulfed by a storm of newsflashes from a hundred points within the globe’s oceanic skin. Fox watches, mesmerized by the computerized lumen of the planet and the sky cities.

  Fox peers through the flashing alerts and watches the elderly man select news with his fingertips from around the globe, absorbing it all into his personal circuitry. The man sighs and rubs his hands together as if cold, though the room is hot.

  Fox knows the gesture is his father’s – but this man could, almost, be his grandfather, Caledon. The smooth-as-glass dome of the head, edged with a frost of hair. Stooped shoulders. Papery, pale skin. Smooth white hands. An elderly yet unnaturally ageless man.

  Fox looks at the dark, callused skin of his own hands and remembers how soft and unweathered they once were. When he lifts his gaze to the older man in the ghostly light of the globe his father seems to be a phantom of the man Fox will never now become.

  Fox remembers his father as a robust presence who wore his hard-edged energy like armour, forever travelling the planet’s sky cities, a dynamic knight in Caledon’s realm. Age has shrunk and stilled Mungo Stone. Now he travels the planet by cyberspace, Fox sees, troubleshooting from within his globe. His power base, once the steel axis of the empire, has been stolen by younger, stronger rivals across the world. The invasion of the Northlands is Mungo’s last, desperate gamble for lost power.

  Fox steps closer. At last his father sees him. Mungo’s shocked eyes meet his son’s.

  ‘What are you doing here? How did you get in?’ Mungo Stone emerges from the globe. ‘Security!’

  There is no recognition on his father’s face. So the tok-check didn’t alert him? Was his identity just left there, forgotten?

  ‘No guards. No security,’ says Fox softly. ‘Dad, it’s me.’

  The young man holds the shocked gaze of the older one. Mungo Stone gives another useless shout to the disabled circuitry of his personal Noosguard.

  ‘It’s me, David,’ says Fox.

  His father’s eyes widen a fraction and there’s a tremor of the papery eyelids.

  ‘I don’t care who you are,’ he says. ‘No one enters my chambers without—’

  ‘I’m your son.’

  ‘My son,’ says Mungo Stone, and now his voice shakes, ‘is dead.’

  Fox watches his father’s right hand slide into a pocket. He pulls out a gun.

  ‘I’m not dead,’ says Fox. Not yet.

  He looks at the gun in his own hand. Slowly he slips it back into his belt and faces his father with bare hands. All his nervousness has gone. For once in his life, Fox intends to be the most important thing in his father’s world. And for the first time, Mungo will know who his son really is.

  ‘My son,’ says Mungo Stone, the gun still in his hand, ‘was killed in the 2100 Uprising.’

  ‘You saw his body?’ says Fox. ‘But you couldn’t have, you weren’t here. You were at the other side of the world.’

  Mungo’s pale face bleaches to white. ‘My father, Caledon—’

  ‘– lied, if he told you I was dead. I vanished in the slave breakout but I didn’t die. No body was ever found.’

  Mungo Stone brushes his hand across his brow, wiping away beads of sweat. The atmosphere is stifling, though the city air should be mellow and fresh – another sign that all systems are in breakdown, even the air con. All of a sudden Fox longs to be standing at the top of the old tower with the North Wind in his face.

  ‘Who are you?’ demands Mungo Stone.

  ‘The last time we met in the Noos,’ says Fox, ‘we had a row because you forgot my seventeenth birthday.’

  ‘I never forgot, I . . .’ Mungo stumbles to a confused halt. The gun droops in his hand.

  ‘You had important business in New Jing.’

  Mungo Stone takes a stumbling step backwards. Flashing alerts on the globe spike all around his head like a silent lightning storm. He makes a fumbling gesture as if to brush the planet aside.

  ‘End,’ he orders.

  The lumen fades and disappears.

  ‘It can’t be you,’ Mungo murmurs. But recognition sparks at last in the stricken eyes that study Fox’s face. Where could you have hidden all these years? How could you do this to your mother – no, this is outrageous, impossible.’ He shakes his head, takes another step backwards.

  ‘You left
my identity in the system,’ Fox reminds his father. ‘Why do that if you believed I was dead?’

  ‘That would have been your mother,’ Mungo says, after a pause. ‘She never accepted your death.’

  Fox hears pain in his father’s voice. They seem to stare at each other across a gulf of time.

  ‘If – if it’s you – where have you been?’ his father demands. ‘Which city? Why did you disappear?’

  ‘I’ve been living in the drowned ruins at the foot of this city.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! No one could survive there.’

  ‘Look.’ Fox holds out his begrimed hands. ‘This is dirt. Earth.’ He pulls open the leather collar of his jacket to show his father patches of infected skin on his neck and chest. ‘Insect bites. You know there are flood refugees surviving outside the wall. You know what’s outside. I survived – just as they do. Some of them.’

  ‘David,’ murmurs his father. ‘What are you? What have you become?’

  Fox looks into his father’s bewildered face. Mungo’s power struggles in the empire have fascinated his son as he tracked all his doings, stealthily, in the news stations of the Noos. With a clench of his heart Fox now sees in his father a glimmer of his own self: the same dream-chasing spirit that drove Caledon to create the sky empire is behind Mungo’s plots and schemes, and drives Fox now. That spirit lives on in Lily, who chased her dream through a mountain, risking her young life to find him.

  The dreamers of the day are the dangerous men, his book of rebel wisdom said. They are the ones who act with eyes wide open to make their dreams come true.

  A family of dreamers, all of us, Fox sees; for good and for bad.

  ‘Your David did die,’ he tells his father, ‘but I lived on. I am Fox and I lead the Surge – the last survivors of the Great Floods. War is on your doorstep, Dad. My Surgents have amassed all across the world. We are breaking through your walls. We are outside and inside every city. We are in the Noos. We are here,’ he says as the tremor of an explosion vibrates in the room. ‘There are Surgent fleets in the Northlands and other high lands of the Earth, all ready to fight the invasions of your empire. How many fighters do you have? How many thousands? Do you know how many flood refugees there are in the world? Millions, Dad. And I have roused them. The empire will ultimately lose.’