by K. Gorman
At first, she thought he wasn’t going to tell her, citing military secrets or some other such thing, but then, he sighed, and his shoulders dropped. As he relaxed further into the seat and his eyes once again glanced up to meet her gaze in the central mirror, she realized that he had been driving all night, virtually non-stop. Another side-boost of his quicksave?
“We used a series of connected chains. The Orcus provided the first of the chain, and Wardboro provided the last. Took about thirty minutes to transmit.”
Her jaw loosened. “You sent us through message centers?”
“No, we sent you through military relays. Your data was priority.”
Well, didn’t that just make her feel better. “I assume you’re not going to tell me how it works?”
“I couldn’t even if I tried. You’d have to ask the researchers that put it together. The science is beyond me.”
And probably beyond me, as well, though she wasn’t going to admit that out loud. She assumed it was some sort of quantum energy science at work, and her knowledge of that was even less than basic. She’d been educated on Old Earth, not Nova Earth, and Seirlin hadn’t thought to include very many useful, up-to-date things in her education.
When they’d gone through the gate, she and Nomiki had found out just how outdated and misinformed their knowledge was. About the only thing they could rely on was math. That, and the fact that Seirlin had provided the Cross-System Standard Language as part of their second-language curriculum. It had taken well over a year of intense study, but they’d become near-fluent. In the years after, they had been almost indistinguishable from other System-Second-Language speakers, which happened to include about forty percent of the system.
“You should have told me,” she repeated.
“And you would have cared? After we abducted and imprisoned you?”
Her lip curled. “You know that I lived on Alliance planets first? In fact, apart from the last month, the only time I’d spent in Fallon territory was at Tianjin Station for a few months. I went to university on Belenus, then my sister and I moved to Enlil. Hells, we were even here for a year.”
“Oh, yes, and that makes you loyal citizens,” he said, his tone sarcastic and smooth. “Quite the planet-hoppers you two are.”
“I’m not loyal to either side,” she clarified. “You guys just happened to be assholes when you were trying to get me. I’d even made a deal with Caishen to heal their people, but you all seemed intent on enslaving me.” She thumped back into the seat, bumping into Marc’s shoulder. “Plus, I was looking for my sister at the time. Fallon happens to have her, currently.”
Baik snorted. “So, if we acquire your sister, you would be happy to work for us instead?” His tone made it seem like it was farfetched, and his eyes slipped back up into the mirror, narrowing on Marc instead of her. “I suppose we’d have to find you an Alliance boyfriend, too?”
He’d meant it as a joke, and she could understand where his frustration came from, but her hand curled tight around Marc’s wrist.
“You know what?” she said. “I take it all back. You all can just go fuck yourselves.”
And, as she went back to staring at the city and its clusters of Lost outside, she felt everyone’s attention on her. Laika, who’d taken the inside seat away from Colahary and was therefore crammed up next to her, shifted, the soldier glancing to the side at her. Baik made no reply, but David also turned his head over to her, a kind of pitying, understanding look in his eyes.
She glanced at him once, then deliberately pushed her gaze past and back out the window. The car bumped up another ramp, climbing through the ceiling discus to the next level, but she kept her face and mind placid.
It occurred to her, as the car slanted up onto the ramp to the next level, the thick, transparent discus wavering by the windows, that she had just told a man, and all the Alliance occupants of the car, who had just lost upwards of ninety percent of their planet’s population, to go fuck themselves.
Yeah? Well, maybe they shouldn’t have been such pricks about it in the first place.
Chapter 22
The next rest stop came a few hours later as they pulled into the parking lot of a fifth-level strip and jumped out. The sun, looking bleary and undernourished in the haze of wispy, high clouds that haloed the city, sat at an angle to the buildings, casting long fingers of light down the sides of the blocks and putting only the highest towers in direct light—but the discus above caught and refracted it, part of its material giving the light a boost that caught Karin’s eye.
Before, when she’d been living in Nova, she hadn’t looked at the discs too carefully, really only as symbols of the strange new world she and Nomiki lived in and, occasionally, as art pieces, but the boosting properties made her think again about the science behind the discs, and the progress Nova had already made with studying her light.
Maybe Fallon’s technical superiority came up short when it came to plasma and quantum studies.
Three of them—Baik, Colahary, and David—broke off to visit the nearby convenience store, ignoring the line of autovendors that sat at its wall. The other two soldiers stood guard, blasters in their hands and attention on their surroundings. Seras gave Karin and Marc a quick glance over as she moved, sizing them up, then took up a position several meters away with her back to them.
Karin followed Marc to the autovendors. Despite the color on the storefront, the blocks of buildings around them gave the entire scene a slate-gray base. Even with the sun out, the lot was in shade. The gritty, broken asphalt had a series of Ternics, a type of invasive wildflower, bumping up through its cracks. The lines for parking spaces were more broken than whole.
They were in Minerva, so she’d understood by the number of signs they’d passed. None of the soldiers had told her such, but she’d have to be blind to not notice. As Marc stopped by one of the vendors and pulled out his wallet from a back pocket, she watched an arrow-winged bird with white flashes on its wings fly in a loose arch over the side of a building across the way, swooping to a nest it had built into a nook under a window ledge. Birds, too, had had to adapt to the disc lifestyle. During the year she’d spent in Liber Pater, she’d seen over twenty dead birds on the ground, and more than two dozen simply dazed, a result of collisions with both the city’s many windows and other transparent structures but also the discs.
The next level started about twenty stories above them, and it provided a warbled view of the upper levels. The tops of the buildings looked more like vague sticks in this dense area, with the chemicals in the disc focusing more on the light than the shadows. During the day, they didn’t so much glow as minimize the darkness. She could still see the detail in the buildings, but they’d taken a comical skinniness that was difficult to look at, as though someone had warped them through a computer program.
“It looks better at night,” she offered, making a gesture to the mottled surface above. “In a place like this, I bet they have the money to make it really nice.”
She meant it, too. Apart from Nova’s nouveau rich, who lived in the top stories with the sunlight on their designer clothes and sipped the system’s most expensive concoctions out of thin-stemmed, handmade glasses, Nova’s major disc-cities tended to gray out in the daytime, just like Minerva was doing currently—which didn’t make the city ugly, per se, but the entire thing swapped in the night when the lights and street colors came on. On evenings when the three moons were visible in the sky, their light funneled down to the lower levels either by screens or careful placements of mirrors in the structural buildings and inter-disc zones, people had a tradition of flocking to art galleries and streetside vendors.
Minerva, in particular, was known for a watercolor painter who had lived there for the past fifty years, bringing its fraught history to life with a combination of traditional and modern styles. Karin had gone to an exhibition once, when the art museum had run a free admission day in honor of Saint Reyes Day and she was just starting to get used to be
ing around the public. She hadn’t lasted long—she and Nomiki’s early paranoia had kept them close to home for the first few months—but what she’d seen had stuck with her ever since.
“I believe you,” Marc said, perusing the autovendor’s contents, mostly a mix of tea drinks, cracker and biscuit packs, and a row of coffee supplements at the bottom.
Her eyebrows shot up as he slid an Alliance Cloudbank card out of his wallet. “You still have one of those?”
After leaving Alliance territory, most of the Nemina’s crew had switched over to the empire’s credit system.
“Yep. Believe it or not, they didn’t confiscate my wallet when they transported us in. Well—” his head tilted. “—they did, but they gave it back.”
“That was nice of them.” She stepped closer, eyeing the second machine’s contents. Beyond the glass, a series of dried fruit packages, chips, and three different types of spicy fried squid—a shipped-in specialty from Ariani’s port—occupied the top tier, with what looked like some out-of-date sandwiches showcased below. She had a feeling that no one had changed these vending machines’ products for a few weeks. Beside her, the next machine carried a variety of drinks, including hot and cold coffee.
“You want anything?” he asked. “I’m about to see if this card still works.”
She jabbed a finger at the window. “I’ll take the nuts.”
“Protein. Good choice.” The machine beeped as he input the selection and pressed his card against the reader. There was a small whir, and her package of nuts dropped into the receiving bay. She bent to grab it.
“Sweet,” Marc said, pressing the card against the reader again. A second later, two bottles of water toppled down. “Now we’re in business.”
Karin scrutinized her nut package, then turned her eyes to the convenience store windows beside them, where Baik and the other two men were scavenging through the shelves, shopping bags in hand. “You know, I don’t think they’re paying for anything.”
“Probably not. Do you blame them?”
“No. These are extenuating circumstances.”
“Yep.” Marc passed her a bottle of water. “For you.”
“Thanks.” But, when she went to twist it open, he caught her hand and stopped her. She glanced up.
“For later,” he said, giving her a steady look.
Ah. Yes. For the attempted escape tonight. If Baik didn’t insist on driving through the night again. Despite his lack of sleep, he showed very few signs of actual exhaustion.
That quicksave must be nice.
As if her thoughts had called him out, the door to the convenience store slid open and Baik strode out, three neon green, puffy biofabric shopping bags in his hand. Colahary and David followed him, carrying their own hoard of goodies.
Baik gave a short whistle to the two women—which made Karin wince since it reminded her of someone whistling for their dog—and said something she didn’t quite catch, one hand going up to indicate the Lemoore at the far left of the lot. A change in seating arrangements, perhaps? Had he found a way to stuff another row into the back?
Marc turned to watch them, a low breath blowing out. Around them, the quiet of the city pressed in on them, somehow less unnerving than it had felt before when they’d been driving. Another bird, this one sporting the same white flash on its wings as the last, flew in a tripping, rhythmic line toward the top of a low, built-in house, its back half molded and converging into the business block behind it. Behind her, the low whirring sound of one of the garbage drones, its load nearly empty, drew closer, paused for a moment, then turned away. It was so quiet, she could hear the hum of the lights in the vending machines and the drum of their motors in the back.
She almost relaxed, holding her water and nut package close to herself.
But then, the tell-tale prickle of energy started across her skin again, slipping into her bones with the subtlety of an electric shock.
“Marc, it’s happening again.” She rubbed at her forearm with her opposite wrist, juggling the water bottle and food package. Then, louder, she shouted, “Guys! There’s another shift event coming!”
Baik jerked his head around, brows furrowing into a sharp line on his forehead. “Now? But it’s the middle of the—”
She didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. A crackle of static smashed into her from the side. She staggered into Marc with a gasp, ducking as the light overhead seemed to piece itself apart, then slip together again. A roar rose up in the back of her head, half electric. She dropped the bottle and package as the sensation drove into her bones, making them hum against her flesh.
Marc’s hands went around her, steadying her as the world seemed to quake all around—but when she looked up, everything was still. The light was still there, drifting down through the discus above, the building tops stretching to the gray clouds like spindles or spikes. The largest sun, Aschere, hung in a bleary haze to the right, looking like a glowing pill in a bowl of swirling milk. The second sun, Lokabrenna, followed up only as a blue tinge farther down the horizon.
Baik was still talking to her, but she couldn’t hear him, only saw his mouth move, the frown on his face turn into a mix of serious concern and growing confusion. The entire soundscape had turned into a bubble of silence, pressure mounting on her skin as if she were diving deep into liquid. As she watched him approach, it felt like she was looking at two halves of the same world, one dark, one light, or a kind of weird, living, double negative, with one strip of film still undeveloped.
The roar in her head intensified. Marc helped her as she slipped to the ground, bare fingers rooting against the rough crack of the asphalt, her knees following soon after with a bite of pain. One hand found the bottle she’d dropped. She grabbed it again.
The plastic made a loud crackle in her tight grip.
She looked at it with a frown, puzzled. Then, as through water, she heard shouts. When she turned her head back up, the others had begun to run, pointing at the sky.
Above, the double-eclipse hit the sky in segments. Each disc filtered the change in light with a delay, like watching a countdown. Static roared in the distance, along with something else. The sound of rain started. She turned her face in its direction with a grimace, her upper lip curling back from her teeth. She knew what was coming next—discomfort, pain, potential loss of consciousness. The light inside her flared, determined to fight back. The shadow of the eclipse reached the discus above them, and the level switched into night mode like a gasp of breath.
Marc spoke in her ear, his words frantic, urgent, incomprehensible. In her ears, the sound of distant rain was still oncoming.
When they hit, her entire vision blacked out. Noise screamed in her ear. She felt herself falling, felt the ground shift and jolt beneath her. A shock ran through her fingers like electricity.
She shook her head, struggling against it. Light surged, pure white, forming claws of her fingers. She snarled, fighting her way out.
The noise melted away like butter. She staggered forward, half-dragging Marc with her, and blinked into the blue-draped streets around her. Although the static-sound of the event still buzzed at the back of her mind, the rest of the world had returned, no longer in a bowl, but everyone seemed to have gone quiet.
She took a cautious breath, hearing the air rasp through her throat, and stepped forward. A loose piece of asphalt scuttled away from her shoe. The autovendors behind her hummed. Their night-bulbs had switched on, spilling a bright white glow onto the cracked and buckled curb.
The backsplash caught the painted sides of the convenience store in a blue-tinged washout, their textured pre-fab boards given a new life in the dimness. The convenience store lights, and the pawn broker business beside it, also shone out and illuminated the front walk of the store, albeit in a warmer, friendlier tint. A few seconds later, the lampposts of the strip’s parking lot flicked on all at once. The streetlamps followed, brightening into life as if someone had activated them on a dimmer switch.
She swallowed, directing her gaze back to the soldiers. The entire team had a nervous, spooked appearance, attention darting around to the perimeter as the scene’s light shifted, backing up toward each other in an instinctual way. As she straightened, the shakiness in her limbs finally under control, a shadow darted from around the next building.
Before she had a chance to react, the creature leapt onto the Lemoore at the far edge of the lot and snarled. Baik yelled and started forward, blaster cracking, but the creature only flinched at the shots. As Seras and the others began to shoot, most streaking beyond the Lemoore to another two creatures that were coming up fast, the first creature retracted its scythe blade, reared up, and slammed it down.
Glass and metal shrieked and crunched together as its blade sliced through the roof and caught the driver’s side window.
Okay, that didn’t quite disable the car, but Karin doubted it was about to stop there.
As if to prove her point, the second creature made a savage swipe to the car’s tires—why on Earth were they still using inflatable tires in the thirty-eighth century?—and the car lurched with a hissing groan of air. Both scythe-blades appeared to get momentarily caught in the vehicle, but the creatures both managed to yank them back out.
Their heads turned toward her.
“Go!” Baik yelled. “The alley!”
Marc half-hauled her backward, then passed her the water he held as he turned around. Someone shouted his name.
As they pounded for the small alley on the side of the convenience store, one of the soldiers came up—Baik, she assumed, since he would be the fastest and most likely to carry spare weapons—and handed him a blaster. Its whine rose in her ears as he disengaged the safety.
The shade of the alley pulled over them like a cloak, hiding them from the neon signs and lamplight illumination of the rest of the level. Only the discus above them, waking into its night mode, glowed—but even its glow seemed stunted, as if the strangeness of the eclipse had messed with its inner workings.
