Then I slip through the clouds, too, so that they are a snowy tundra under my feet, and the burning light of the new day splits the horizon. The crack between the ground and the sky widens. I feel myself bathed with light, which fills my body with weight, and I begin to fall. Far below me, my body stands erect, arms locked at the sides, head thrown back, mouth open in an interrupted scream.
Ghannouj lowers his staff. He looks up at me floating above him. I notice that he has a monkey butt bald patch on the crown of his head. “Now you must return to the corporal world,” he says. “Say the word of prayer.”
Vienne.
And I’m back in my body. It feels fluid, like water vapor, and when I look down at my feet, it is as if they are not there.
The log is level. The pond is calm.
My body feels too heavy to hold itself up. My knees buckle, and before I can react, my feet slip from the log, and I fall sideways into the water. I sink to the bottom, the stems of water lilies filling my vision. Air bubbles escape my lips, and I am too exhausted to mind.
Then, as the thought comes that it would be okay to stay here, Ghannouj grabs my arms and drags me to the bank.
I lie panting, watching the clouds break in the sky.
Ghannouj leans over me, hands on his knees, gasping for air himself.
“That hurt me,” I say as I sit up, still giddy, “a lot more than it hurt you.”
“This is true, but you have achieved a state of bliss that surprises even me.” Ghannouj places the tip of his staff to his forehead and bows. “Under normal circumstances, we would hold a great feast to celebrate your transcendence, but I need a nap, and I believe that you have an aerofoil to catch.”
I rub my aching forehead. “Don’t I need to find one first?”
In a moment of perfect timing that Vienne would call kismet, but I would call the theatrics of a wily old monk, an aerofoil glides overhead, its long wings reaching forever, the dual vortex engines purring on its tail, its long shadow floating through the gardens.
Ghannouj bows. “I have taken the liberty of finding one for you.”
Chapter 27
Tengu Monastery, Noctis Labyrinthus
Zealand Prefecture
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 7. 29. 05:51
The aerofoil has landed when Ghannouj opens the gates of the monastery. A light rain is still falling. A skirmish line of clouds fills the north sky, and without a word, Ghannouj closes the gate behind me.
I’ve got extra load-outs on my ammo belt, a cleaned and loaded armalite on my shoulder, and Vienne’s necklace around my neck. Other than that, I’ve got no extra weight. It’s a long flight to Christchurch, and I have to travel light.
Arms folded, Tychon leans against the fuselage, with an aviator cap pulled down over his eyes. Still, he perks up at the sound of my boots on the ground, ducks under the wing, and pushes open the passenger hatch. The cabin is big enough for two, plus a little cargo. It’s made of clear plexi, probably to reduce weight, but the thought of being able to see the ground between my feet makes my heart race.
Vienne.
“Sorry,” Tychon says, “no step stool.”
“Don’t need one.” I haul my bruised and beaten self into the seat.
After Tychon locks the hatch down and slides behind the controls, his long legs almost touching his shoulders, I thank him for giving me a ride.
“I’m not doing it for you,” he says, starting the vortex engine and letting the ’foil coast. “I’m doing it because Riki-Tiki would’ve wanted me to.”
“Fair enough.”
With Olympus Mons filling the western horizon, Tychon uses the Bishop’s Highway to navigate, having no onboard telemetry. “Hope you don’t mind flying by the seat of my pants,” he says, and I don’t complain because that’s pretty much how I live my life, too.
We fly low to avoid CorpCom radar. The sun can’t find us, either, so the cockpit is cold, and my hands grow numb. I tell myself that it’s the low temperature and not panic causing the blood to pool in my abdomen.
“Vienne,” I whisper repeatedly.
My exhaled breath evaporates on the hatch cover as the aerofoil rises above the canyon. We glide over the plains, the terrain a rolling green carpet interrupted here and there by deep craters and stratums of stone protruding through the soil. Like a metal raptor, Tychon catches thermals with his ailerons, rising high enough to touch the storm clouds.
“So you’re a crop duster.”
He laughs. “Who told you that?”
“Rebecca. Back at the collective.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a thing she’d say.”
Twenty kilometers into it, we fly over the first of the settlements that the Sturmnacht destroyed. From here the farms form a patchwork of perfect squares, more than half of them blackened by Sturmnacht raids. When the aerofoil dips to find another thermal, I can make out a grain silo that has toppled into a mill house, a greenhouse with smashed glass, and a line of harvesters burned into a mass of twisted metal, the ground forming a puddle of ash around them.
“If you’re not a crop duster, what are you?”
“Lots of things,” he says, pointing at a pair of grappling horns on the nose of the ’foil and the winch bolted to the deck. “Mostly, just some jack who’s really skilled at pickup and delivery.”
“So you’re a smuggler. Human or cargo?”
“Either. Makes no never mind to me.”
Down below, the scenes of carnage repeat over and over. A swath of destruction stretches out from the highway until we reach the river. There, Tychon banks right and follows the Gagarin downstream. The town of Dismel comes into view and then slides by. I think of the refugees who walked toward Christchurch, looking for safety. But I realize now, they weren’t escaping. They were heading straight into the fight.
With a crack like automatic fire, a line of chain lighting announces a new storm cell. Tychon dips low, bringing us close to the top of the Hawera Dam, and I see something that makes me forget about vertigo. On the north side of the dam, I see dozens of Norikers parked near the observation decks. Their clearly labeled cargo: a harvester’s weight in C-42 explosives, enough of the stuff to blow a crater deep enough to set all of Christchurch inside of.
“Oh crap,” I say out loud. “Look!”
“At what?” Tychon answers.
“The Sturmnacht,” I say. “They’re planting explosives on the dam. Lyme’s going to wipe out the Zealand CorpCom with one massive blow. We have to sound an alert. Get the city evacuated. Does this have any telemetry at all?”
“Just my personal handset,” he says.
“Then call in an emergency at this voice IP station.” I give him the number and the protocols, passing on the words from my Regulator days, hoping that the dispatcher will believe him. It’s all we can do right now, except get me to Christchurch as fast as this thing will fly.
Christchurch! Parliament Tower! That’s where Vienne is. Where Archibald is.
“Get me to the capital. Floor it or whatever you do to make this crate cook!” I say. “Land wherever you can. I’ll hoof it from there.”
“Roger,” he says. He banks hard again and rises into the clouds.
When we emerge, a patrolling Hellbender is there to greet us.
“Evasive!” I shout.
“Hang on!” Tychon yanks back on the stick. The aerofoil goes nose up, and we disappear into the cloudbank again, chased by fire from the port gunner. Bullets tear through the ’foil’s carbon fiber skin, and Tychon lets out a deep grunt.
It’s a too-familiar sound. “You’re hit.”
“In the foot.”
“Abort the landing!”
“Not on your life, Regulator,” he says. “Riki-Tiki was the kindest soul I ever met,” he says. “I want to see these poxers pay.”
Me, too, I think, and try to pretend that he’s not wounded. We stay in the clouds for an interminable number of minutes, Tychon flying completely blind, rain and wind racking the fuselage,
twisting the jack wires. Could there have been a worse way to test my new state of bliss?
Then finally, when I’m about to puke from the combination of vertigo, air sickness, and the smell of Tychon’s blood in the cockpit, we break out of the clouds, holding an altitude of three hundred meters. Clearly visible through the plexi is Favela on the hill overlooking Christchurch. The slum’s been firebombed, and it’s burning. A chemical plume of smoke darker and thicker than a storm front rises on our nine. We bank past it, and the capital city comes into view.
We follow the river that leads to the Seven Bridges at Christchurch. A thousand meters ahead, CorpCom Hellbenders are laying fire down on the bridges, keeping the Sturmnacht from advancing. On the bridge closest to us, a convoy of Noriker trucks roars toward the Circus.
“Get ahead of that convoy!” I shout.
He cuts across the river, swooping so close to the tops of the bridges and then the buildings that it feels like I could touch them. He veers right, looking for a good drop zone, which happens to be the Tannhäuser’s Crater a few meters beyond Christchurch. “That’s our best chance to land,” he shouts.
“Too far away from the action,” I shout back. “Swing over the Circus. I’m going to jump!”
“Without a chute? That’s insane!”
“I know!” I reply. “But sane went out the window a long time ago!”
Below us, the city is empty: No people, no autos, and no trains. The traffic lights are dead, the only thing moving is trash blown around by the wind. Then we fly over the Circus, and everything changes. I spot line after line of sandbags and concrete barriers topped with strings of razor wire. A division of CorpComs is double-timing into battle position, and even in the aerofoil, I can hear the thrum of Hellbender rotors in the distance.
A Hellbender thunders toward us, and we’re taking fire again.
“Mimi,” I say. “Time to wake up. We’ve got a job to do.”
She makes a yawning noise. “Roger that. Nice of you to let me out to play.”
“Spare me the sarcasm, Mimi, and find us a good landing spot.”
“Need a drop zone!” Tychon yells.
I scour the Circus for a good spot. I’d rather not hit pavement, just some tall building with a roof that will help absorb the impact. Then I see it—smoke roiling from the middle of Parliament Tower. It’s the same floor that Vienne jumped from, the one that houses the boardroom.
“What do you think?” I ask her.
“You could do worse, cowboy.”
“There!” I shout. “Drop me on the roof of Parliament Tower!”
“On the roof?” he shouts. “You really are insane!”
“Just do it!” I tighten the strap on my helmet and flip down the visor. I unclip the hatch, and the wind slams it against the manifold. I unbuckle my seat belt.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mimi says as the slipstream sweeping over the wings threatens to send me tumbling too early. “Your heart rate is close to tachycardia.”
“I’ve jumped like this before,” I say, remembering a fall from a space elevator that landed me in a sewer.
“That was when your suit was functioning normally,” Mimi says. “The armor may not be able to handle a rapid descent in its current state.”
“Well, if it doesn’t, all I can say is, it’s been nice knowing you.”
“What about your arm?”
“It’s already broken.”
As the aerofoil circles toward Parliament Tower, I shove the door open and brace myself on the lip of the hatch. Below me, the roof comes into view. My head starts to swim, and I feel like I’m going to pitch out of the cockpit.
“Cowboy!” Mimi says.
Vienne.
When Tychon shouts, “Go!” I jump straight out, almost colliding with the wing. The slipstream grabs me, and I start to turn end over end. Before I can right myself, my trajectory takes my body past the tower and sends me hurtling off target toward the roof of the library.
“Vienne,” I repeat as I flatten into a feetfirst dive and crash through the asphalt and corrugated steel roof of the library.
For a few seconds I’m aware of nothing but a rush of concrete dust and a loud screaming noise. Then I realize that the screaming is coming from me, and the dust is falling on my visor from the hole in the roof above me.
“Thank the heavens for symbiarmor,” I say. “I think I passed out.”
“You did,” Mimi asks. “How is your arm?”
“No worse than the rest of me,” I say after a few seconds. “Of course, all of me is in excruciating pain. Remind me to never, ever jump through a roof again.”
“You said that the last time you jumped through a roof, too.”
I stand hands on hips to stretch my back, then jog out of the room and hit the stairs. Using the fire escape route, I leave the library through a side exit and make my way through a back alley, until I reach the elevated courtyard in front of the tower. From here, I can get a visual fix on the entire Circus.
Like a metal shaving to an electromagnet, I keep finding myself drawn to this place, the site of my father’s fall from grace and Vienne’s sacrifice, and my shame. Ghannouj would probably say that it was inevitable, that events have come full circle. To me, it feels more like a bad meal that keeps trying to come back up.
“Do not mock Ghannouj,” Mimi says. “Despite our differences of opinion, he got you here, cowboy. The rest is up to you.”
The top of Parliament Tower is engulfed in flames, and the angry clack of fire alarms split the air.
“Hope I was right about the landing spot,” I tell Mimi.
“I am glad you were right about the armor.”
I should be moving, but I’m too busy remembering the courtyard where I’m standing. Where I grew up. Where Vienne and I lost our fingers. Where my father rose to power and fell from grace, taking me down with him.
Prince of Mars, my ass.
Then in the distance, a sonic boom thunders across the capital city, blowing out windows as the shock wave passes.
“Down!” Mimi yells.
I hit the deck as the tower’s glass panels shake loose and fall onto the courtyard. I pull into a ball as the panels explode against my armor. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s scary as hell.
As I’m lying there covered in glass, the concrete pavers start to undulate. The courtyard rises and falls.
“What the hell?” I shout. “An earthquake, too?”
“Not an earthquake,” Mimi says. “It’s the same shock wave, but waves traveling through the ground take a few seconds longer to reach Christchurch.”
By the time I’m on my feet, I realize that I know the source of the explosion.
The Hawera Dam is gone.
The water is coming.
“How long, Mimi?”
“Falling water accelerates at nine-point-eight meters per second squared until it reaches terminal velocity. Terminal velocity of water is calculated on the mass of the water released, the coefficient of drag—”
“Mimi! Approximate!”
“Less than fifteen minutes.”
“Let’s find Vienne.”
The tat-tat-tat of automatic fire draws my attention to a couple dozen Sturmnacht pinned down by shock troops.
“I don’t think this was a planned attack,” I tell Mimi. “The lines are too dispersed, and the shock troops are scattered.”
Taking the point, a ranger sprays ammo until the clip is empty. Kneeling behind an overturned trash barrel, he pops the clip and sticks the red-hot barrel of his battle rifle into a puddle. Steam hisses from the vent holes as he flips the taped clip over and rams it into place.
Watch your back, I think, as a triplet of Sturmnacht round the corner of the library, using the bullet-pocked saplings for cover. A quick burst of fire through the leaves, and the ranger takes a bullet in the side. The force spins him around so that he’s facing the charge and his finger finds the trigger. All three Sturmnacht fall a few seconds before he gives
in to the wound. A spasm wracks his body. He topples backward, already dead as his rifle fires a rainbow of ammo into the heavens.
A waste. This is so stupid. Stupid, useless, and a criminal waste of life. If I ever get my hands on him, Lyme is going to pay for his crimes.
“How much time left, Mimi?”
“Less than ten minutes.”
“We better find Vienne. Stat.”
Then with a boom that sounds like a packet of C-42 exploding, the library doors blow apart. As the dust clears, out walks a soldier carrying a battle rifle in one hand and a blaster in the other. The first shot takes down the closest shock troop, followed by a spray of bullets into a skirmish between a Sturmnacht and two troopers.
“Never mind. I just found her.” But I’m not sure that I wanted to.
The Sturmnacht seem to be thinking the same thing, because they scramble in the darkness, but the squad leader screams for his troop to line up for another charge. “Form up!”
Both lines move up on Vienne, their laser sights dancing on her armor.
“Drop your weapons!” the leader barks.
Vienne tosses aside the empty battle rifle like it’s an apple core.
The troopers move in as if they’ve done this a thousand times, confident in their ability to take down a soldier without taking a shot. Until the first trooper gets too close and Vienne yanks the weapon from his hand and spins him around, a knife pressed against his jugular. The other troopers don’t react—she moved so insanely fast, it takes a few seconds for their brains to catch up.
A heartbeat passes.
“Fire!”
Shots rip through the air. But Vienne is using the trooper as a shield until their clips are spent and the firing chambers click empty. She drops her shield, the man dead before he hits the ground, and attacks like a Big Daddy unleashed.
I duck into the shadows near Parliament Tower as Vienne hits three troopers with a string of front kicks, as if she’s walking across their faces. She lands in front of the last in the vanguard as he snaps a fresh clip into place. She cracks his wrist, redirecting the fire at the leader, and takes the gun with her.
A third eye opens in his forehead.
Invisible Sun Page 24
