“Yeah, tell me about it,” Vector replied. “Well, I know where she is, but you’ll have to go there without me, mate. I’ve got more stuff to liberate.”
Liberate? Liam was incredulous at this, but now was not the time.
“Where is she?” he yelled over the din behind them. Vector advanced on an automaton rickshaw – its key had been removed, he noticed with a grimace of annoyance – It’s illegal to tamper with the public transit system, he wanted to say, but again, it was not the time – and dumped his booty into the back.
Vector regarded him shrewdly for a moment. “Who do you work for?” he asked.
Liam scoffed. He didn’t need this kind of crap from a damn rebel. “I’ve got a mighty respectable position, if you must know,” he snapped. “I work as the head of a prep team for CIN-3.”
“Huh. I see why you and Leg never worked out,” he noted, leaning to root through the vehicle, brimming in unfamiliar gadgetry. He extracted one which resembled a titanium spider, its center a milky, shifting orb.
“And you just want to see her for personal reasons, yeah?” Vector pressed. “You’re not going to pass along her location to your boss or the police or the duke, then?”
“Of course n–Hey!” he shouted, tempted to punch this kid. Vector set his creation right on the crown of Liam’s head, its spindly legs pinching into his scalp, its processing unit bleeping steadily as it measured his heart rate, oxygen level, perspiration. “Of course not!” he repeated. “Get this piece of shit off me before I take the key out of your back!”
The spidery device’s orb flared emerald and it made a proper ding!
“Fantastic,” Vector chirped. “It all checks out. You’re telling the complete and honest truth, even about wanting to kill me.”
“What the hell, man–” Liam swore as the robotic thing crawled down from his head and leapt from his shoulder to Vector’s hands.
“It’s quite simple, really,” the other boy replied. “This one’s called a Mental Meter. Hey, baby.” He gave his creation a queer little kiss and toggled its center, rendering the color again milky and idle. “Gauges the common bodily symptoms of a lie, calculates, and reports. I’ve got to get the rest of it back . . . before someone really gets hurt.” He suddenly became less boastful, and more furtive. “There’s some pretty dangerous stuff in there. Anyway! Legacy? You might find her at the aerial docks. Just because you don’t see it at first doesn’t mean it won’t show itself, so just walk to the very end, and you’ll see what I mean.”
The young inventor saluted Liam and darted back into the fray.
Liam forged through the throng and ducked down a narrow alleyway, sprinting toward the aerial docks.
As he ran, the radio waves of CIN-3 trembled overhead. Dyna Logan, even after losing her sentries to the state of emergency, remained in her tower. “Although Chance for Choice leader Exa Legacy defines these intruders as refugees, arguing that the city of Icarus has resources enough to accommodate the inflation to our populace. Of course, Exa Legacy is also a notorious proponent of the abolishment of the Companion Laws, which sustain our limited environment by prohibiting superfluous or inefficient procreation. Similarly, New Earth Extraneous Relocation serves us through the displacement of unproductive elements to environments which provide them the opportunity to continue servicing the whole of our society while not burdening it.”
Only a few blocks away, Neon Trimpot heaved a damaged automaton through the glass display window of a five-story finery boutique. An opportunist of the highest order, he could recognize the perfect moment to loot when it presented itself. Many people, prodded to panic by the state of emergency, the occasional blast echoing outside, and the sight of running pedestrians and scuffles in the street, had closed up their shops. Even if they hadn’t, any sentries appointed to private businesses had been diverted to stem the uproar at the police station.
Farther still down the street, Legacy’s old boss, Ferguson Cook, hunkered just behind his office door, an unregistered musket trained on the front of the store. Pierot, his office automaton, stared emptily ahead, his key removed. All lights had been doused.
The Widow Coldermolly hobbled past Cook’s Glass & Metal Fusion, her brass cocker spaniel clinking and yipping as it trundled alongside her. The Widow squinted at each gray-garbed fugitive who raced by. No, not him. No, not him. They’d been separated from each other for forty-four years. The last time she’d seen him – Hubert, named after his father, the man she’d loved so long ago – he’d been only a newborn infant, torn from his incubator and spirited away by N.E.E.R. due to being “unverified” or “unapproved” or some other complete bullshit. If there was truly a day that she’d lost her mind, it’d been that one. What would he look like now? Was he even still alive?
Constable Wesley lay amid utter anarchy, head lulled to the side, crumbled at the reception desk of the police department and dead to the machinations of the rebels, the refugees, or the mobs of citizens. People stepped on him in their fever to come or go from the place.
The mass production units of the industrial territory continued sweating, wheezing, and churning their cranks, Dyna Logan’s frantic reportage rattling through overhead speakers. Occasionally, a worker would pause, gulp, and stare off into the distance. A supervisor might snap at them to move along, everything was fine, keep working, but . . . neither of the two would believe it. They were merely puppeteering out their roles in this society. The worker and the boss.
Behind the factories, Groundtown struggled toward a drowsy state of semi-alertness. Glitch, chugging down his third Connect the Dots in the back office of his House of Oil, had an uneasy crawling in the pit of his stomach, even with the Calm in his system. It wasn’t enough Calm. This couldn’t bode well, though a glance out the window made the day seem an average Saturday. A glance out his office door revealed the typical oil den, its patrons strewn, blissfully mired in chemical torpor. Still . . . still . . . this couldn’t bode well. The rage of the people, the imbalance added by the fugitives, the inexperienced duke, the reduced manpower of the city. He’d heard that the jails had lost their prisoners.
Then again, he thought, cheering, those prisoners will need places to stay, won’t they? Perhaps they would pay dearly for the discretion of their keeper.
Across from the business district and aerial docks, which cut between Groundtown and Lion’s Head like a fence, Abner was mirroring Glitch so precisely that it would dishearten him to become aware of it. He, too, was locked in a room as if it were a safe and he the riches. He drank a tall, cool glass of mossy green, and he drank it quickly, urging it to work. His greatest fears had been realized. In truth, this was likely Malthus’ greatest fear as well. Not Chance for Choice, as some may have thought; not the upset of the Companion system, or even of the whole monarchical constitution; not even this madness in the streets, perpetrated by his own people. The rise of N.E.E.R. was what he had likely treasured, in his heart of hearts, as his greatest fear. This was why the deliveries of Calm and Curiosity had always taken precedence. If there were ever a revolt on Old Earth, the manufacturing and even operational capacities of Icarus would grind to a halt, never mind the moral dilemma a spotlight on these orphan slaves would conjure, and the small matter of lying to so many citizens who had lost children over the years.
Abner strode to the bay window, which peered out onto the courtyard of Lion’s Head, tugging his silk drapes to the side. Thank god for high walls, he thought. By surveying the eerily still cobblestones and limp flag of Icarus, the sheen of fog precipitating, he would never have known of the riots centered in the business district, so nearby.
Perhaps, even if he strode outside, he would not hear it?
Abner edged toward the front door of his home, grasped the knob, and twisted.
A low, gray sky huddled near the glass panels of the dome, the gentle roar of rain outside their microenvironment, a light drizzle precipitating within.
If only Malthus were here, Abner thought. And not
that damn boy . . . It will be okay. It will . . . will . . . He lost his train of thought, staring after the specter of total destruction still looming at the back of his mind.
Vector had rescued almost all his inventions from the evidence locker of the Icarus City Police Department, beginning with the very smallest (the eyeball for the ocular bot, which hadn’t been his, he knew, but Legacy’s) and advancing toward the absolute largest, which would never fit into that damn rickshaw and he knew it. The electric cannon. Its function was quite simple, really: it collected the ambient electricity in the air and culminated those molecules into the glass chamber. The project was unfinished and highly volatile. He had yet to design parameters which would mitigate the collection of the electricity, and so the likelihood of creating an incidental ball of lightning was . . . far too high. In truth, it only worked theoretically, and he considered abandoning it altogether. He’d never even tried to use the thing himself.
But when he returned to the police station for the last time, he was halfway down to the evidence locker before seeing the electric cannon. Two deranged blokes had already liberated it for him, and were jostling it with the delirium of mob mentality, up the steps and back into the main room, back toward the street, as if this were nothing but some really big gun to wave.
“Whoa, whoa!” Vector cried, throwing out a hand with his palm spread in a signal to stop. “That’s a really dangerous device there!”
“Is it now?” one of the men, with shaggy, oily dark blond hair and a malevolent grin, asked him. “Does it scare you?” He swung the barrel of the glass cannon toward Vector and its inventor genuinely screamed, rearing backward and crawling up the stairs behind him.
“Come on!” he begged the lunatics. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
“It’s a cannon, you nancy,” the other man, rotund with mutton chops, sneered at him. “It’s not even loaded; just calm down. We’re just going to have a bit of fun with it, aren’t we?”
“No,” the blond disagreed, grinning. He ran his tongue over his corroded teeth. “We’re going to have a lot of fun with it.”
Vector whirled and raced up the steps, weaving lightly through the thronged first floor of the police station, then exploding through the entrance, spilling down the stoop, dashing to his loaded rickshaw and leaping inside with such velocity that its brass wheels skidded to the left.
Fumbling in his pocket for the automaton’s key, he jammed it into the bot’s back and wrenched the key desperately to the right.
“Hello and welcome to Ic–”
“The aerial docks! The aerial docks!” Vector cried.
He was somehow sure they did not have long now.
Liam broke onto the aerial dock and found it abandoned of not only all guard staff, but of most of the ships on the external dock. He stepped slowly through the open gate which led to the external dock; the rain out there was worse. Hardly any airships remained moored, even though it was dangerous to travel in such weather. Frowning against the spatter of cold water, he trod down the dock, scanning . . . What had Victor said about this place? “Just because you don’t see it at first doesn’t mean it won’t show itself.” What the hell?
But, if Liam excelled at one particular task, it was doing as he was told. He simply trusted that people said things for reasons. So he continued along the dock and continued scouring for the airship Victor had promised him would be there.
He was almost to the end of the line, squinting against the rain and telling himself he surely didn’t see what he saw . . . the stern of a ship seeming to materialize as if through a layer of disintegrating fog . . . though there was no fog. As he advanced, the ship revealed itself, foot by foot and inch by inch. Its panels were a patchwork of materials, as if the entire thing was built second hand, squares of copper and pipes of titanium with a low, deep belly and a stout berth. It was connected to an equally ragged hot air balloon by a system of ropes and pulleys, aided additionally by propellers and sails.
That damn Victor, Liam couldn’t help but think. He’s a right clever son of a bitch.
As the body of the vessel came into being, so did its crew, rushing along the deck. He recognized none of them, with the exception of Dax Ghrenadel. The wiry brunette, never to be seen without a leather rebreather strapped over his nose and mouth, was easy to recognize quickly. With him came others, but Liam paid them no mind. “What’s going on out there?” Dax demanded. “Have you seen Vector, or Leg?”
“I saw Vector,” Liam answered. “May I come aboard, or is this ship not really . . . real?”
Dax rolled his eyes and set out the companionway for Liam to join the crew on the deck. More people filtered up from the berth – even some Old Earth fugitives – and he wondered dazedly just how many there were.
“What is this?” he wondered, mostly to himself.
“I said, what’s going on out there?” Dax repeated, eyes flashing. “Haven’t seen anyone or heard anything in at least an hour!”
Liam stared into the desperate gaze of the other man – acutely aware of how senselessly invested in Legacy Dax was, much like Liam himself – and slouched, uncertain of what to tell him.
“I came here looking for her,” he admitted. He knew that was what Dax really wanted to ask, even if he wouldn’t let himself. “I don’t know where she is. It’s . . . it’s total chaos out there, man. People trying to kill each other.”
Dax’s eyebrows settled low. “I’m going to look for her,” he said.
A pretty, blue-haired girl grabbed his arm. “No!” she cried. “I came out of that mess, Dax! I can tell you! Let it blow over!”
“What if she needs our help!” Dax wrenched his arm from her and made toward the companionway he’d only just set out. “What if Vector does!”
“Dax, no!” the blue-haired girl called again, more emphatically now. “Don’t!”
“I’m not just going to stand here, safe and sound outside of Icarus while the entire city goes–”
“Vector!” Rain called, bolting to the rail of the ship. An automaton rickshaw skidded through the gate of the exterior dock, the rebel inventor lunging from its seat and scrambling to load his arms with an array of brass-colored instruments. “Vector, what’s going on in there?”
“Let’s go,” Vector rasped, dumping his instruments onto the slick deck, where they went ding and tink in the drumming raindrops like a chorus of tiny bells. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, racing back down the companionway and onto the exterior dock. “Now! Rain! Raise the damn anchor!”
“Right now?” Rain asked. She looked remarkably uncomfortable. “Why?”
Vector approached with a second armful of devices, again spilling across the deck. “Some idiots have got the electric cannon,” he explained, lifting the companionway without asking for any further help. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here now; that thing is dangerous as fuck.”
“What?” Dax snapped. “What’s going to happen? We can’t just leave the city behind, everyone we know is in there!”
“Wrong, mate!” Vector barked, jabbing him in the chest with an index finger. For the first time, the bespectacled, dreadlocked boy rose up as the stronger of the two, in spite of his shorter stature. “Everyone we know is dead, and we will be too–”
A strange sound emanated from within the dome, a crackling, electrical series of tiny pops.
The deck fell silent, staring hard at the floating city, willing it to give up its answers.
A jet of pale green tendrils, part light and part air, arced over the business district beyond and slammed into the side of the dome, sending a wave of shuddering ripples in its wake and shattering several triangular panes of the thick glass plates.
“Oh my god,” Dax said, his eyes fastened securely to the large hole. “Oh my god.”
A blast of heated air moaned loudly through the jagged crater, and Icarus began immediately to tilt.
“Legacy,” he murmured, entirely to himself.
�
�The anchor’s coming up,” Vector announced, moving toward where the airship was moored. “I’m sorry, man.”
The streets were complete and total hell to navigate. Legacy didn’t know how she’d ever find Coal 106 – Radia – in this turmoil. She’d braved the bottlenecked bedlam of the main stretch, but hadn’t recognized a single soul. If I were her, where would I go? Legacy asked herself. But then, had her sister even survived long enough to arrive here? And if so, was she still free enough to decide her own course of action? Or had some “law-abiding” citizen snatched her up and bashed her head in?
Now, Legacy wandered back toward the aerial docks, still scanning the streets. Having strayed from the abyss, there was chaos here, but it was a hushed, passed chaos, like treading through the aftermath of a tornado.
Slivers of glass from store windows or busted automatons littered the street, along with an occasional spray of gears or a stray key. Single people ran past Legacy without even glancing back, though there were no groups. Fires poured out of windows, but no one came to extinguish them. There was no sign of any law or order, and she couldn’t help but wonder where Kaizen was – where the constable was – where anyone was who could help; even a stiff, law-abiding civil servant like Liam would do.
There was a crumpled body spilling from an alleyway, its head shaved, its garb gray.
It couldn’t be her, Legacy deduced, passing the fallen soul. Its body was small and bent at odd angles, and she was certain the thing had to be dead. But then, just as she strode by, it groaned, and she glanced over her shoulder.
The refugee thrashed in her unconscious state, her arms folding away from her face to reveal the heart-shaped bone structure. The strong nose and the full lips. The peach-fuzz of silver hair.
Legacy returned and dropped to her knee to gather the slack girl into her arms, who felt so small and frail compared to Legacy herself, the way her neck lulled as if boneless; it was difficult to believe that their DNA was identical. The girl – Coal, Radia – her eyelashes fluttered and closed again, but Legacy found it surprisingly easy to haul her up and sling her across the shoulder. “We’ll get you some help,” she promised her sister. That was a phrase she hadn’t really even taken the time to consider. She had a sister. It’d all gone so fast, so dire, such demand, to truly think about this was an unaffordable luxury.
LEGACY BETRAYED Page 15
