by Tom Julian
Izabeck nodded heartily.
“How does God forgive us?” He looked out to all their faces. “How does God forgive us? Let’s look at our sins. His book has been incomplete for so long. He forgives us when we complete His Word. When we make this third testament come to life! Our universe is His. So every part of our universe is a part of heaven, waiting to be taken in His name! Do you understand this?”
Gray motioned to the Believer symbol hanging behind him; the downward-turned ichthys, which represented closed eyes open only to God. “God is love. Love is blindness.”
The men looked at him, unsure. A few gave the Assault Corps cry of “I-ya,” but tentatively and barely over a whisper.
“Do you understand what God is asking you? He’s judging you, every second. But not your rage, your gluttony, your lust. There is one deadly sin left, friends. One. Sloth. When you rest a minute, His Word is forgotten.”
Heads nodded around the room. In the back of the space, Michael and Warner stood. Michael’s eyes were doubtful as usual as he watched the display. Warner fell to his knees, nudging Windwhistle and sharing a prayer mat.
Gray continued, “Where we’re going, it’s the first place we’ll usher in as part of God’s kingdom. The Sabatin we take we’ll use against the Arnock and we will do God’s will. Let’s honor those whose stories have ended, Forestground…Dov…Sol…Neviim…Bison. God loves our sacrifice. He smiles on us and gives His…”
Out the window and far away, Nina exploded in a noiseless flash. Gray turned to the window, his face blank with loss. “Timber, I promised forgiveness!”
Gray banged his fist on the glass, looked out to the dimming burst. “Out!” he demanded and the men quickly found the exit. Michael stayed and checked the ship’s sensors through his smart-device. He showed Gray a representation of a quickly expanding debris field.
“It’s the Nina,” Michael said.
“I see that.” There were no escape ships streaking away. No ion trails that would represent an exodus. Michael hung his head. He thought he’d be happy with Timberwolf dead.
“Keep scanning. He’s been dead before and he just keeps coming back,” Gray said.
“Emmanuel…”
Gray turned on him. “You want me to be mournful? You want me to be angry? Maybe relieved? Sing for your old friend?”
“I’m not celebrating,” Michael said.
“But you want to. I know what it was like for you…”
Michael couldn’t hold his tongue. “God loves your sacrifice! You just said it. He’s taken you up on that, it seems,” Michael said, stopping Gray’s anger. Gray looked suddenly old, very old and frail. He was silent for a long moment, his face finding different emotions, from grief to rage, but not staying on any one too long.
“His story is over,” Gray said finally. He spoke the words to the Assault Corps mourning song softly, “When my life in this place is over, I’ll fly away. To that home on God’s celestial shore, I’ll fly away.”
“This tub doesn’t have any whiskey, does it?” Michael asked, and Gray shook his head.
The Nina’s power cell burst in a secondary explosion, expanding the debris field further. Michael gave Gray a somber face. He dared not betray the satisfaction that was creeping into him. Was Timberwolf a faulty old friend? Should he mourn him after everything that happened?
Hallelujah by and by, Michael thought.
THE DESCENT
Nemesis floated above the clouds of Highland. With a puff of the maneuvering thrusters, the ship began its descent. After a few minutes, it reached the high cloud layer and disappeared into it. They went through layer after layer of clouds, each opening up a new vista of sky, the first few bright and airy but becoming darker and more ominous as they descended.
They reached the seventh layer and flew several miles above a dark and swirling cover of clouds that looked to have the consistency of cooled lava. “Where is The Eye?” Gray asked Sergey. The small man was strapped into a seat on the bridge.
“It’s where I said it was. About four thousand miles from here,” Sergey snapped.
“I’m not getting any readings,” Farrow, the pilot, said. “I’m visual.”
“You’ll get nothing. We’ve got this whole place shrouded. Nano-machines. Last count fifty-seven trillion.”
The ship could make four thousand miles within the atmosphere in about an hour, but Gray knew Sergey had put them this far away from their target to delay them. He expected this type of behavior from Sergey, like he had expected him to take him on a circuitous route to get to Highland in the first place. He filed it away. Gray’s patience was quickly reaching its limit.
The consistency of the cloud layer changed as they got closer to their target. It looked jagged and pebbled now. Pillars of clouds rose up, like slow-motion geysers, sometimes twisting over and creating arcs. Farrow banked and maneuvered around them, pressing everyone on the bridge into their seats.
The pilot slowed when they were two hundred miles out. Lightning crackled below them. Giant living gasbag creatures, like floating octopi the size of small islands, rose out of the clouds and reached out for Nemesis with their tentacles. They never got close and slipped back down below the cloud line.
Below them now was The Eye, a circular area that the cloud layer channeled around. “It has a six-mile radius,” Farrow estimated. The pillar of clear air descended all the way to the surface of Highland. Farrow brought the ship to a hover-halt over the center of The Eye. More gasbag creatures, these like crabs attached to giant air bladders, came through the cloud wall at the edge of The Eye and leaped out hopelessly at Nemesis before floating back upwards.
Darkness engulfed the bridge as the ship descended below the lip of The Eye. “Starboard eighteen degrees,” Farrow announced, making a correction. “Seventeen miles down. No structures. There’s a mountain.”
“Eye of the storm?” Gray turned and smiled at Sergey. The small man simply looked out the window like a commuter who had come this way a thousand times before.
“Jesus, I’ve got a face in the cloud wall!” Farrow kicked back on the maneuvering thrusters, turning the ship. Outside, there was indeed a giant, wretched face made from clouds and twisting its head to track them. As the ship turned, other faces appeared, some smiling mockingly, some disintegrating in agony before them.
Sergey was grinning. “It’s just the nano-machines in the clouds. It’s the same stuff that’s blocking all your scans. Let’s just say you’re not exactly welcome!”
Nemesis continued its descent to the bottom of The Eye, landing skids extending. It settled into a space near an outcropping, with its nose pointed towards a massive door in the side of a sheer mountain face. Gray came out of his chair and pressed up close to the windscreen. “We’re here!”
Sergey clapped slowly and without sincerity. “There’s a chance to step away. I promise none of you will survive in there.”
Gray didn’t turn to him. “You’re a bastard of little faith.” The others stayed in their chairs, unnerved and unwilling to look outside. Gray took in the mountain face, maybe a mile high looming above them. He felt a twinge in the pit of his stomach. He searched for his own faith, for the tap on the shoulder from the Almighty he had heard so much about. Nothing.
“Let’s get out there!” Gray said, throwing his own doubt aside. “No time to waver!”
Less than an hour later, the crew filed out of Nemesis onto the surface of Highland. First came Gray, Sergey, and Izabeck, then Warner with the human crew, and then Michael leading the Phaelon. The air was surprisingly fresh and earthlike; not like some unbalanced colony world with terraforming towers straining against the elements. White dust, similar to that found on the surface of the moon, covered everything. They unloaded in silence, taking in the vast emptiness of the place, the only sound the squeak of their boots on the dust. The men’s armor auto-camouflaged to match the pale surroundings, making them seem ghostly and transparent.
In the distance, the cloud
wall of The Eye spun slowly and noiselessly around them. They’d descended through it, but being in the center of The Eye defied logic. The clear air went up to the top of the cloud layer and the faintest hint of light peeked down from miles above. “It’s like we’re inside a tornado or something,” Warner said as he took the place in.
There was no wind and not even the hint of a breeze. Wrath and Thomas were the last to exit the ship. The beast shrieked as he touched familiar terrain. An uncomfortable laughter came out of the men as they watched Wrath dig heartily into the ground.
They walked the five hundred yards to the door in the side of the rock face. It was wooden and twenty feet tall and looked like something from a medieval castle. Gray assumed it was locked and that Sergey wouldn’t be forthcoming with the key.
“Thomas, have Wrath open it.”
“No, it’s not locked. Just pull the levers,” Sergey said. “You know how much it cost to put in a wooden door?”
Gray rolled his eyes. Two men pulled down on large levers near the hinges and the door opened with a groan. The party entered, single file and tentative. Inside they found themselves at a sort of transit station. At their presence, dull floodlights came on, illuminating a single train car covered with dust. Tracks barely visible under the dust curved off into the distance.
As their eyes adjusted, the party couldn’t help but look up. “Goddamn!” Warner exclaimed. Beyond the train, a pile of wrecked spaceships towered a thousand feet high. Spidery maintenance machines tending the heap turned their glowing green eyes towards them for a moment and then went about their business.
Amongst the wreckage were huge white columns. Gray followed them with his eyes, expecting to see a ceiling, but the columns disappeared into a murky blackness. “What’s with the dust?” he asked Sergey.
“It rains the dust. Shakes off the ceiling.” Sergey motioned to the train. “That will take us in.” He touched the side of the train, which came to life with an electric buzz, and the party boarded.
The train moved past the wrecked spaceships, its headlight slicing through the darkness. More spidery machines peered out at them from behind the pillars. Occasionally, floating robots moved by overhead. “What is this place?” Gray asked Sergey.
“It’s our bone yard. Those ships belonged to people like you. People we caught with their hands in the cookie jar.”
“You didn’t catch us. We caught you. Are we the first to see it?”
“The first against our will,” Sergey admitted. Gray nodded, transfixed by the relics of failure.
In the back of the cabin, Droma, the Phaelon clan leader, was on her knees. Behind her, her clan-mates descended one after the other, arms to the sky. “Wessei draf,” they repeated, some weeping.
“What are they saying?” Gray asked Michael.
“You’re seeing something rare. These Phaelon are scared as hell,” Michael said. “They’re telling their god that if she wants to take them right now, that’s fine. They don’t have to take one step farther.”
Gray nodded, looking over to the men. Every one of them, even Warner, traced the Believer mark on their foreheads. Before he knew he was doing it, Gray was tracing the mark as well.
Sergey caught him. “Don’t bother praying. We’re blocking the signal.” The small man turned back to the window, watching the mountain of wreckage taper off. Ahead of them at the terminus of the track was another door in a rock face, this one bigger than the last.
THE AIRLOCK
Timberwolf squatted outside the tight airlock in the belly of the Santa Maria. He pulled on the last parts of the Sabatin rig, the leg plates fusing to the thigh. He felt the electric contact between the rig’s sensors and his skin and his heads-up came to life. The visual fizzled for a moment, so he knocked the side of his helmet against the bulkhead and it cleared up.
“Jesus! I just put it back together, you mind?” The space was exactly the right height for Achilles to stand in.
Timberwolf popped open his faceplate. “Rig’s going to get more action than that.”
“Gray probably thinks we’re dead on the Nina. You might surprise him.” Achilles turned from a panel on the wall. He’d been masking the Santa Maria’s ion trail, sending the particles into sub-light so the ship wasn’t detectable. Achilles fretted, wringing his hands. “In my estimate, Gray won’t get Penny to give him what he wants. He leaves. But the Arnock mind is on another level.”
“I know that.” Timberwolf smirked.
“Well, of course you do. Highland can defend itself, but I can’t let the Arnock land. They’ll figure it out.”
“When does Kizik come out?” Timberwolf tapped his temple with his glove, alluding to the deal they’d made.
“As soon as Gray’s dead! Not a second before. Can you do this?” Achilles motioned to the world below, taking the implication way beyond killing Gray.
“I have no idea.”
“That’s relieving. Honestly, if you told me you were confident I’d blow up your suit the second you stepped outside.” The two men locked eyes, acknowledging that Achilles had Timberwolf’s life in his hands and could kill him with a touch of a button. Timberwolf thought about trying to hack the suit and deactivate Achilles’s self-destruct, but he’d surely buried that so far down in the rig’s programming that he’d never find it. “Want to know what concerns me?” Achilles asked.
“I don’t think I have the time.”
“One thing.” Achilles pointed at Timberwolf and then shook his finger, turning it to point at himself. “It’s not you. It’s me.”
“I thought it was me. It’s always me.”
“I did all of this. It was my idea to send you the rig. Maybe make an ally. We’ve never had friends before. Your people want this place as bad as Gray. Admit it. You just go about things differently. However this ends, we’ll have someone to answer to, won’t we?”
“We’d be a better landlord than Gray,” Timberwolf said.
“You get it, though, of course you get it. It’s better you than him, but we don’t want you either. I’m scared that I might decide to cut you out. That I might decide to cut out everyone. Take my chances.”
Timberwolf grinned. “Don’t leave that up to Salla.”
“I’ll tell you. She’s livid.”
Timberwolf pulled a lever. The airlock opened with a hiss. “You better clear out, unless you want to come down there.”
“That’s a horrible, horrible idea.”
Timberwolf knew that Achilles would be watching his every move, that he’d press the button if it even looked like Kizik was gaining control of him. Timberwolf certainly couldn’t blame the man.
“How can I trust you?” Timberwolf asked. “To, you know, not kill me?”
“You can’t.” Achilles grinned. He grabbed Timberwolf’s arm as he climbed into the airlock. “Look, just try to help my brother. He’s what I have left.”
“I’m not in the promises business,” Timberwolf said. Achilles nodded, eyes closed. “But he’s valuable. We can’t lose him.”
As Timberwolf closed the airlock, he saw Salla looking in through a porthole in the cabin. She hadn’t spoken to him since they left Nina. It was entirely possible that as soon as he was outside, she might convince Achilles to leave. He knew that he couldn’t count on her anymore to fly down and rescue him.
“My brother!” Achilles said as Timberwolf pulled the airlock door closed. A moment later, the space filled with light as Timberwolf opened the exterior door. There was a burst of thrust from his rig and he was gone.
He dove straight down towards the surface of Highland. His heads-up showed an altimeter spinning, losing a thousand feet per second. He began to feel the first tugs of gravity as he got close to the clouds, rippling now with thunderheads. He disappeared into the vapor, slowing from the resistance. The rebuilt rig was well within tolerances, internal and external pressure equalizing nicely. He passed through the cloud layers and caught sight of the living gasbag creatures miles away. Much soo
ner than he thought, he found himself falling directly over The Eye.
With a few bursts of thrust, he was dead center above it. He continued to fall head-down, now two miles above the surface. The dark gray walls of The Eye spun around him in a constant and stable tornado, driven by the trillions of tiny nano-machines spinning in the vapor. He could see them in his heads-up through the infrared filter, twinkling like ice crystals.
He saw the bottom of The Eye now. Its white surface seemed to glow below him like a dim light at the end of a tunnel. At 1,500 feet, he deployed his parachute. He saw the entrance to Highland in a rock face below him and Nemesis parked nearby.
He landed with a stutter-stop and the parachute retracted with a zip, his rig auto-camouflaging to match the chalky-white regolith. Timberwolf thought about the times he’d huffed up and down craters on Luna, the earth hanging above him against the pure black. Looking up, he saw the funnel of The Eye wavering slightly above him and the dimmest light at the very top. He tried contacting Santa Maria through every channel, but nothing went through, all of his signals soaked up by the nano-machines in the clouds. He had no doubt that the signal-block was selective and that Achilles was watching his every footstep.
He expected the gray vapor making up the walls of The Eye to sound like a hurricane. But the silence was unnerving. He took a few steps and his boots squeaked in the soft dust. He scanned the area and very little reflected back through any filter. What he could see was that Nemesis was just five hundred yards away, its jagged arrowhead shape half-hidden behind a rock outcropping.
Timberwolf raised his left gauntlet and powered up the chemical laser. He zoomed in on his heads-up and saw the pilot moving around outside the ship. The man was trying to rig up some sort of communications relay. Looks like Gray can’t get a signal off this rock either. He could kill the pilot easily and then slice off the bridge of the ship, taking out Gray’s ride home.
Then he had second thoughts—Salla, up there stewing, if she hadn’t abandoned him already. He lowered his weapon. Best to keep Nemesis intact until he was sure he had a way off Highland.
