Danny’s heads-up display started offering course corrections as it homed in on the signal. When the clouds parted, he could see they were over foothills and forests.
Suddenly Sky shot up the forward ladder and grabbed Danny by the shirt. The ship jerked off course.
“I need more. Give me more. Now!” she gasped, eyes as wild and crazy as they’d been in the bay. Hawk made it up the ladder a moment later, but he barely managed to crawl onto the deck.
“Chase, take the con,” Danny ordered.
“But—vertical landing,” Chase sputtered, holding up his gimped hand. He was sitting at the engineering console, and it didn’t have flight controls. He’d have to move seats to fly, and they’d just hit gravity. They passed through the clouds, zooming through white mist.
“Then hold Sky back,” Danny said.
Chase wrestled Sky onto his lap, but he was fighting one-handed against crazy.
“Sky, we’re nearly to Cordova,” Danny said, gritting his teeth.
“What?” Sky asked, peering through the front window. “No, this is wrong. This is—I need to go back! He’s going to die!”
She tried to pull him from his chair, but Danny couldn’t let go of the yoke now that they were in the atmosphere.
“Back where, bébé?” Hawk asked, hauling himself into the pilot’s chair and strapping in.
“Rocan!” Sky said.
“Hawk, take the con,” Danny ordered, glad he’d shown up and hoping he would listen. Hawk had at least co-piloted a few vertical landings. “Saskia, I need you on the bridge, if you can manage.”
Hawk swore, snatching the yoke at his station and taking control of the ship.
“This is wrong,” Sky repeated, scanning the treetops. “Wrong like Boone. They’re all dead. They’re already dead! We’re too late.”
She closed her eyes and gasped, her skin getting cold almost instantly. Danny worried she might asphyxiate. He should have thought to wake her sooner.
“Look at me! Sky, look at me!” Danny said, cupping her cheek.
Her breaths were quick and short, and they shouldn’t have been.
“Deep breath in,” he coached.
She inhaled, cautiously at first and then deeply.
“Can you breathe?”
Sky nodded, sitting tall a moment, then slumping under gravity’s pressure. There wasn’t much room for her between him and the console.
“How do you feel?”
Sky glanced out the window, alternating between panic and exhaustion.
“Captain,” Hawk begged, biting his lip and trying to stay on course.
“Small corrections,” Danny reminded him. “You’re doing fine, son.”
“No, he’s not, Danny!” Chase countered.
Sky covered her ears, then looked at Danny. “I need more. The Hyproxin—I need more. I was so close to saving them.”
“Danny, you need to land the ship,” Chase insisted, tugging Sky’s arm and undoing his harness. The gravity got the better of him and he couldn’t escape his chair.
Sky tried to close her eyes again and Danny smacked her cheek. “Don’t close your eyes.”
“Danny, land the ship!” Chase hollered. “Sky, let him land the ship.”
“Bébé, help us,” Hawk added. “You’re still on Oriana. It has only been a few hours. We have time. We need you here.”
Sky rolled off of Danny’s chair, sitting behind the three console chairs, scooting away from them. “Why are we landing here?” she asked.
“Cordova,” Danny said. “Tray detected a broadcast as soon as we cleared the Kessler cloud. Tray, are you still hearing music?”
“I’m getting words now. Same signal on multiple frequencies,” he reported. “Let’s hope it’s a greeting and not a warning. Want to hear?”
“Wrong like Boone,” Sky said.
“They’re not dead if there’s music playing,” Chase said, slithering out of his chair and crawling to her, resting his body over her legs. “Don’t make Danny crash the ship.”
Danny’s hands flew over the con. Vertical landing required three-dimensional control and couldn’t be handled by the yoke with the ship in glider mode. If he didn’t keep focused, Hawk would burn their fuel trying to dodge the trees.
“Need grav-assist?” Sky asked.
“If you can make it that far, we could use the fuel savings,” Chase said.
Danny heard them kiss and slapped the Vring. “Tray, let’s hear those messages.”
10
Lieutenant Magistrate Gene Torrance was in a panic. The Magistrates Toulane had not returned from their morning run, which left him in charge. It figured aliens would descend on their city while he was in charge. He walked his fingers diagonally across his chest, following the dark green buttons of his jacket. The new suit was for the evening’s festivities and he’d been in the middle of a tailoring when he’d gotten word of the aliens. The Chief of Broadcasting had called saying there was interference in the radio signals and the source was external to the city. The Weather Forecast Office came next, warning of something entering the atmosphere over the ocean and heading directly for the city. After the Magistrate’s warning yesterday, they’d been watching the sky, waiting for a meteor, but they hadn’t expected it so soon. And they certainly hadn’t expected to receive a message from the meteor just hours before Festival.
Torrance had ordered that all the broadcasting towers send the same greeting: If you come in peace, welcome. The Prince of Law ordered all non-essential personnel to return to their homes and await instructions, but many had taken to the streets and were spilling out of the dome borders to catch a glimpse of the visitors.
“Chief, they’re speaking Trade. Their message is in Trade!” Kylie Mare, the Chief of Broadcasting exclaimed. She had engineers, cryptographers, and linguists from all over the city trying to decipher the signal coming from the vessel.
“Then rebroadcast our greeting in Trade. Warn them of the rivers and wetlands. See if and where they intend to land,” Torrance ordered, pacing between the tables and couches that had been set up for Festival. Their normally ornate conference room had been transformed into a lounge for more intimate groups. The Chief of Broadcasting had only minimal music transmitters set up for Festival, and none for communicating with outsiders. They were horrendously under-equipped.
“Get word to the Prince of Law,” Torrance continued, running his fingers through his wavy, green-dyed hair. “Secretary, have the Magistrates been found yet?”
Secretary Yolande Villon sat cross-legged on one of the couches, fingers flying furiously over a tiny tablet. She tucked her soft, yellow hair behind her ears and poked her tongue between her silver-shaded lips. “They were sighted at the northern border near the river gate. I have deployed their guards.”
“I don’t want them guarded, I want them returned to the Palace,” Torrance grumbled, trying not to take out his frustration on her. “Our Alien Preparedness Plan is a joke.”
“But it was a good joke, and everyone laughed when I presented it,” Yolande said, winking at him. He and Yolande had met at a Festival when they were nineteen. They’d had three babies together over the years, but Yolande had no interest in motherhood, so Torrance and his wife had raised them. The youngest had finally moved out on her own last month and was preparing for her first Festival.
“Then as the resident expert on Alien Preparedness, what do you recommend?” he teased.
“Why don’t you invite them to Festival?” she shrugged. “Everyone loves a party.”
“Secretary,” he chided, perching on the arm of the couch opposite her and resting his elbows on his knees. None of the training scenarios for government office had prepared him for this moment and for some reason, all he could focus on was his tight-fitting suit and the green hair dye staining his pinky finger. He spoke Trade fluently, but he’d heard the broadcast, and it hadn’t sounded like Trade to him. He’d told Jeremiah he was retiring three weeks ago, and his friend had begged him
to stay on until the end of the year. This could have been someone else’s headache if he’d stuck to his plan.
Then he felt Yolande’s hand on his knee.
“Keep calm,” she said sagely. “Keep your people calm. Madame Magistrate always foresees doom with her curse, but with her foreknowledge, we avert the crisis. They won’t crash into the city, because we were ready. We will guide them.”
“Calm,” Torrance repeated, shaking his head in disbelief. “If I weren’t in charge of the Palace right now, I’d be the one running to the border for a first glimpse.”
“We saw those air ships when we were kids, and our parents have nothing but good stories of travelers,” she reminded him. “You know they’d tell a war story if there were one to tell.”
Torrance nodded, vaguely recalling the sight of the three massive copper ships that had parked next to their city. Even with photographic evidence, it played in his mind like a fiction.
The Chief of Broadcasting dashed into the room, shouting: “Chief, they will land within minutes by the Marshwood gate.”
“The forest side,” Torrance said, hopping off the couch. “Good, good.”
“They have agreed to remain on their ship until we come to a diplomatic agreement for their entry into Nola.”
“Oh, good. Friendly aliens,” Torrance said, rubbing his belly to soothe it. The new plan was to stall until the Magistrates arrived.
“Ease up, Collette. I need those fingers tonight,” Jeremiah said, tugging free of her vise-like grip. His body throbbed in time with his rapidly beating heart, and even so, he could feel her heart racing at twice the speed.
“Mm,” she acknowledged, shaking her hand loose, but keeping his arm firmly around her waist. They waded through the marshy, northern tributaries until they cleared the canopy, giving themselves the best view of the open valley and hillside.
“Collette, if you’re feeling weak, then we need to get back to dry land and call for help,” he said. “What’s wrong? Can you breathe? Do you feel sick?”
“I want to see it,” she said.
“And I don’t want you to die right after,” he argued, holding her back. Then he saw the truth of her premonition. A giant ship streaked through the clouds, black as moon-slate with markings of red and gold. The wings looked too small for flying and it left white contrails in the sky. The ship made a beeline for his city, gliding in on a collision course.
Swearing, he tightened his grip on Collette’s waist and pulled her back. Collette didn’t move, and they both tumbled into the muddy grass.
“Collette—”
“Watch,” she whispered. The mud seeped into his clothes and shoes and he feared the end was coming, but then the ship paused in mid-air, hovering over the city. A thruster fired, nudging the ship to one side, and then it rocked back and forth like a leaf, settling on the rocky land between the forest and the dome.
Jeremiah sat up, craning his neck to see, but the dome obscured the ship. He kept flashing back to his childhood when the strange-looking visitors from the east came. He remembered them now like the gold-skinned aliens from children’s books, but he knew they were human.
“Jeremiah,” Collette gasped, her hand flying to her chest, her face getting pale. Her body twitched and she fell into his lap. “Health. My heart.”
Maybe it was the shock of seeing her premonition come to life. Maybe it was something else. It didn’t matter. Scooping her in his arms, Jeremiah slogged through the mud and passed into the dome. As soon as his feet hit solid ground, he ran for the Palace, fighting the gathering crowd as droves of people flocked to the border for a glimpse of the visitors. We are Magistrates. We should have returned to the Palace immediately.
Collette’s head flopped against his arm and chest as he plowed through, hollering for people to make way. Those that heard him did their best to make a space. One young man in a shepherd’s cape recognized the Magistrates, then began using his voice and staff to clear a path.
“Serviceman! Over here!” the young shepherd shouted, waving over the uniformed messengers who were scouring the crowds. Two green-clad servicemen heard and saw, then began relaying orders to others, doing their best to wrangle the crowd and create a path.
“Who is fastest?” Jeremiah asked when the first serviceman reached him.
“Magistrate?” the man questioned.
“I need the fastest to run for medical assistance. I need the strongest to carry Madame Magistrate to them. Her heart is failing,” Jeremiah said.
“Yes, sir,” the man said, taking off at lightning speed, weaving through the crowd. When the next two arrived, Jeremiah handed Collette off to the strongest, and the man ran.
“Sir, you’re needed back at the Palace. The travelers are communicating using our own broadcast network. The Chief of Broadcasting says they’re speaking Trade,” the last serviceman said.
“I’m coming. I just need to catch my breath,” Jeremiah said, bending forward and resting his hands on his knees. He was covered in mud and grass seed.
“Shall I carry you, sir?” the young shepherd asked.
Jeremiah shook his head, not sure if the question was in jest and not caring. He took off running as fast as his legs would carry him. It was because of Corin that he could run a six-minute mile. He only wished he were running it with his family.
11
Danny slumped at the table in the galley, sipping the fresh, hot bunna that Tray had made before landing. He hadn’t felt this gravity sick in years but took comfort from the fact that they made it to ground in one smooth, graceful effort, and with Sky’s help, saved most of their fuel.
Sky lay in her chair, footrest up, back reclined until it hit the wall. Her body quaked with emotion, and she seemed resigned to being awake for now. He didn’t want to give her more Hyproxin until they knew the situation outside. Hawk balanced on the arm, his body wedged against hers. Danny would have thrown a blanket over the pair, but that would involve standing up.
“Is there more tea?” Sky asked, her teeth chattering. “I felt like the answer was right there, but it’s all fading now. Fading and blending with the past. The future. So many hybrids in hiding. Half-breeds flying. So many Disappeared saved. And the… and the…”
She shuddered and her eyes bulged. “Is there more tea?”
“I’ll make it,” Hawk said, rolling off the chair. He glanced at Danny, and Danny pointed to the appropriate cabinet.
“He’s not affected by the gravity change at all,” Sky whispered.
“It’s his hybrid legs,” Danny said, watching jealously. “You were running around when we hit gravity. What happened?”
“I think I’m still half asleep. The lower half,” Sky said, massaging her thighs. “It was much better sleeping next to John. I didn’t dream at all.”
“Do you feel rested now?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not— I don’t—”
“Are you bone tired? Are you hallucinating? Are you achy? Headachy? Sensitive to light? Loud noise? Motion? Are you nauseated?” he asked, rattling off a list of questions. He didn’t know how she experienced rest. “Do you feel an uncontrollable urge to jettison yourself into space?”
“Well, the ‘sled won’t start up, and I’m wondering about the range on the glider, but the sense of urgency has gone down. I don’t think I’ll shoot anyone... else,” she said, accepting tea from Hawk. “And I feel hungry.”
“Sandwiches are coming. Hold on,” Tray said, walking carefully down the stairs, his arm linked with Saskia’s. He looked a little more heavy-footed than normal, which helped Danny’s ego, though his brother didn’t rush to sit. Saskia made a beeline for the bunna, poured a cup, and sank to the floor to sip and savor.
The dining area was small, having been designed for eating in smaller shifts, but there were chairs for everyone. Chase slumped on the bench next to Danny, pumping his fingers, trying to get the circulation going again.
“Were the Cordovans willing to help
?” Hawk asked, pulling out a loaf of bread and finding the jam that Sky liked.
“The bad news is this town is called Nola,” Tray said, making a cheese and protein spread so they could make sandwiches.
“We didn’t make it?” Hawk said, disappointed. Tray paused to give him a hug, and Danny couldn’t help but admire the progress his normally touch-averse brother had made in being able to comfort a friend.
“Told you it was wrong,” Sky mumbled.
“You told us they were dead,” Danny said.
Tray glared at them as he brought food to the table. “They have a few Trade speakers and I use the word ‘Trade’ loosely. From what I understand, there’s some sort of national holiday and we’ve been invited to a celebration at a Palace so…”
“We may be dealing with a monarchy,” Danny said, rubbing his fingers through his beard.
“They did recognize us as travelers, not criminals or spirits,” Tray said. “They were really nervous about the ship’s name. The person said if we were transporting the spirit Oriana, then move along.”
“They know the pantheon,” Danny smiled. “If it made them nervous, perhaps their city worshiped a rival spirit. Could be a theocracy.”
“Or they’ve actually encountered a spirit,” Saskia said.
“Did they mention a patron spirit?” Danny asked.
“You know, I forgot to ask,” Tray said. “I decided not to affiliate with any god or spirit creature. So no swears to any deity while we’re out there.”
“Zive, Tray. It’s not like we’re missionaries out to slaughter the infidels,” Danny said.
“That’s exactly the swearing I don’t want to hear,” Tray said. “We believe Cordova is nearby, and maybe they’re trading partners. Let’s ask nicely.”
They heard a clattering on the stairs, and Morrigan swore. Tray and Hawk rushed to help.
“I thought you two were going to lie down for a while,” Tray said, supporting Morrigan by the elbow and seating her at the table.
Premonition: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 7) Page 7
