She turned the first pad, its sine waves twisting through the dark.
Kisin. The death star.
Nkiruka glanced up and saw that Kae was sitting rigid, his face frozen and unreadable.
“Wait,” she murmured. There was a cold stone in the pit of her stomach, but out of the night, something was whispering to her to hold back her fear. It was only the first pad. There was no way to know what it really meant, not yet.
The second pad.
Sol.
“Not them,” Nkiruka said softly. “Not Adam, not Lochlan. Not yet.” She tapped the pad with her fingernail, its waves shifting gently and rhythmically. Kae was sharp enough to draw his own conclusions, but the words still wanted to be said. Needed to be said, to confirm themselves. “The Protectorate. The death that touched Adam now touches his homeworld. The source of protection.”
“As we expected.” Kae was nodding slowly, his hands clasped together. He stared down at the pad and then up at Nkiruka again. “I’d hoped … I’d hoped they might have stopped it before now. But I guess if they had, we would have heard something. Even this far out.” His gaze was fixed on Nkiruka, but she got the distinct impression that he wasn’t seeing her anymore, that he was searching through and past her toward the answers that he so badly wanted to come through her.
“But what about them?”
Nkiruka said nothing. The third pad.
Jana. The Lady of Secrets.
“In hiding,” Kae said, before Nkiruka could issue her interpretation. “Good. That’s … Yes. That’s good.”
The attitude of his body had subtly changed. Part of him seemed to be sagging, though some tension remained. There is no one to guide us through the night. Nkiruka fought back another shiver. Our future is hidden from us.
The final pad. That very future. As she slid her fingers under it to turn it, Nkiruka realized that she was holding her breath. And she kept holding it when she saw the image of the vibration, a dark dance full of violence, a close embrace of Kisin. Its distant sibling.
Ares.
War.
They stared at it for a long time. This too, she knew—she felt—was not unexpected. The current period of doubt and greater distance from more populated parts of space, as the convoy traveled on its far outward arc toward the galactic rim, had begun in battle and bloodshed, and that darkness had ghosted their path, subtly changing their dance. It was something else that everyone sensed but no one wanted to speak about, no one on Ashwina or on the other ships, and—she was sure—no one in any of the other convoys.
War. Not in the past. But war, coming. Coming like the paths of comets, the long orbits of stone and ice. Coming to strike them all.
At last Nkiruka began to gather up the pads, returning them to the deck. Kae continued to sit in silence, his head bowed, almost as if he was praying. She let him be. If she could have taken time for herself right now, she might have as well. Perhaps later she would, in her quarters with Satya sleeping a room away, her presence both comforting and nothing of the sort.
“What are you going to do?” Kae asked, once the deck was stowed in her shawl again, his hands still clasped in his lap. “What now, Nkiru?”
Nkiruka rolled a shoulder in half an uncomfortable shrug. It was easiest—to the extent that it was easy at all—to let it be something that was for Kae and Kae alone, his own question and his own answer. “What do you think I should do?”
“You can’t ask me that.” Kae hesitated, then laid his hand over hers. “No one can decide for you.”
“I know.” Nkiruka sighed. “So in some universe where I make certain choices, I go to Adisa, I tell him what I’ve seen, and things slide into motion that can never be stopped. Things that … We already suspected. But this is worse. And if it’s in the reading, it’s more imminent than any of us imagined.”
“But it hasn’t happened? We still have time before it does?”
Nkiruka made a vague gesture. He was right. Was this cowardice? How could she understand what she was feeling? “You know what I’m saying.”
“I do.”
Nkiruka pushed herself to her feet and gathered herself in a way that was as mental as it was physical. “I’m tired.”
Kae rose and nodded. “Come on, then.”
“No. You go.” Nkiruka turned away, her gaze fixed on the stars. They were hinting at things that went beyond what the pads had shown. They were unclear and gentle but so persistent, like water wearing down stone. “I’ll stay here for a while.” This time for herself, here, high and close to the stars that whispered, Ixchel’s ghost lingering around her and perhaps whispering loudest of all.
Kae left her. After a time she closed her eyes and laid her hand flat against the glass.
All the dark and all the dancing.
Pain. A world of it.
Adam groaned. Even that much hurt, the sound scraping against his raw throat. Slowly, he became aware of his limbs, and then the fact that he could feel them, could move them, though he didn’t much want to. Then he focused on what was around him, and he saw something strange.
Two pilot’s chairs, set into the ceiling above him. Who in their right mind would put chairs there?
Slowly he pushed himself up on his hands, pausing as his head spun and nausea swept through him. He looked blearily around. They weren’t on the ceiling. The cockpit—the shuttle. They had gone down, hard.
And no. Wait. He was on the ceiling. The shuttle had come to rest upside down. He scrubbed his hands over his face, squeezing his eyes closed as his stomach wobbled again.
Well, this was an auspicious beginning.
Lochlan.
He scanned the debris around him, panic rising. Simply because—by some miracle—he didn’t seem to be badly hurt didn’t mean that no one else was. Part of him thought about blood, about torn flesh, so vividly that for a few seconds it was all he could do not to give in and vomit … And then a moan under a piece of fallen bulkhead got him moving, scrambling forward across debris.
The bulkhead wasn’t as heavy as it appeared, and with a yank he pulled it away, revealing Lochlan crumpled beneath it, bleeding from a long scratch down the right side of his face and a sizable gash in his forehead but otherwise apparently unharmed. He sat up, his fingers going to his face, and he winced at the blood that stained them.
“Khara, how exactly are we not dead?”
“Unbelievable luck, I guess.” Adam tore away a strip of his shirt—which was already torn—and pressed it against Lochlan’s forehead. Relief was crashing through him, but he was trying to ignore it. If they were still being pursued … “Hold that on there. I need to find the others.”
“I can help you. I’m not that hurt.” Lochlan caught Adam’s arm with his free hand, pulling him closer. “Chusile, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” He allowed himself to pause, covering Lochlan’s hand with his own. They were alive, and still together. That had to count for something. That might count for almost everything. “Let’s go, then.”
The curvature of the cockpit’s ceiling and the scattered debris made the going awkward and more difficult than it seemed. Several times Adam’s balance lurched in a way that made him wonder if he might not be quite so fine after all. Then a pile of loose wiring shifted and a man pushed himself up through it, shaking his head.
The peacekeeper. His blast shield had been nearly sheered away—it must have taken the majority of the force from a blow to the face. Likely it had saved the man’s life. Even so, his lip was split, blood crusting his chin. He let out a rough curse and reached up to remove his helmet.
As he pulled it off, the face that came fully into view was a horror. Twisted pink scars ran all down one side, the hairline burned, the eye gone. In its place was a bionic implant, its reddish pupilless center and eerie internal glow hard to look at.
The face was familiar. But not like the man from his memory, not quite. The other side appeared so much older than it should, the eye a different shape, the
angle different as well.
The man gave them a thin, pained smile. “Hello, Yuga.” He paused, flicking his gaze from Adam to Lochlan. “You don’t recognize me? Wouldn’t be surprised, I saw you for only a short time. And I’ve had some work done. Much as I could. Wouldn’t do for them to be recognizing me.”
Adam blinked. He had thought. For an instant, he had. But it couldn’t be. It made no sense.
“Aarons?”
“Now he gets it. Always knew you were a sharp one, Yuga.”
Adam shot Aarons a glare. He didn’t like the man. He had never been given much of a reason to. That Aarons had engineered their escape didn’t change that.
“It makes no sense.” He stepped forward to help Aarons up, but moved back when he was batted away. “You, helping us? Why? And then there’s also— Shit, Kerry.”
The three of them shouldered their way out of the cockpit—Aarons still moving with obvious discomfort—and toward the back of the ship, where Kerry had been installed. It was even worse than the cockpit, the floor—which had been the ceiling—invisible in most places under twisted metal and wrecked seats, foam padding littered around like some kind of bizarre fungus. Scanning it, his heart sinking, Adam again wondered how they were alive. “Kerry?” Aarons groped his way forward, and Lochlan and Adam followed. “Kerry, man, you in here? Make some noise. Anything. Help us find you.”
Silence. The three of them froze, listening; there was only the creak of the ship and a single metallic clang as something else fell elsewhere in the shuttle.
“Well, this isn’t all that—” Lochlan started to say, but then a low moan and the shuffle of debris cut him off. Aarons hurried toward the source of the noise, shoving things aside as he went. A couple of yards away he stopped and lifted a fallen seat, and went still.
Adam approached, Lochlan muttering darkly at his back. But when they reached Aarons, even Lochlan fell silent.
Kerry lay where the seat had pinned him. His lower body was twisted at an angle that no body should be able to twist, and his torn face was a mass of blood. One arm seemed to have grown an extra joint, and pale bone protruded from the skin. But that wasn’t the worst of it. A jagged shard of metal had speared him through, jutting up from his belly, scraps of cloth and what appeared horribly like flesh clinging to its razor-sharp edges.
Somehow he was still alive. He blinked up at them and raised his unbroken arm, his hand shaking.
Aarons dropped into a crouch beside him, clasping his hand. “Shit. I’m sorry, Marcus.”
No pointless platitudes about him being all right. No useless hope. Adam didn’t know Kerry well, but he knew that he wasn’t a fool. He would know how badly off he was. He would know that he was dying.
Adam shouldn’t have much reason to grieve for the man. Kerry had been in command when Bideshi men, women, children had been slaughtered, many of them without a chance to defend themselves. He had overseen the butchery of hundreds if not thousands of people. He had worked with Cosaire, and chased Adam across the galaxy and to the point of death.
But now he was dying because of the two of them. Standing there, staring down at Commander Marcus Kerry’s ruined body and the agony twisting what remained of his face, Adam was sorry. He curled his fingers around Lochlan’s.
Lochlan didn’t seem sorry. Adam didn’t blame him.
“You made it out.” The words were slurred. Was the man’s jaw broken? “Aarons … I didn’t know it was you.”
“I couldn’t help you. Not until they got there. I couldn’t risk it. I’m sorry,” Aarons said again, and there was a tremble in his voice.
Kerry tried to smile. It was awful. “At least I’m not getting … that fucking firing squad. This is better.” He coughed, his hand going to the metal that impaled him, his fingers dancing along its edge. Lochlan looked away, swallowing. Adam didn’t. It seemed like his duty to witness this man’s passing. “It hurts, Aarons. Hurts a lot. Better hurry it along.”
Aarons nodded. He reached for his sidearm. “You did good,” Aarons said. “Thank you. I’ll take it from here.”
He pressed the muzzle of the gun against Kerry’s temple. Kerry closed his eyes.
Even with the silencer, the shot was quiet.
“So now what?” Lochlan asked.
They were seated in a circle in the cockpit. What few supplies they had managed to scavenge from the wreckage were scattered around them. A survey of the outside from the hole that had been torn in the side of the hull revealed no signs of pursuit, no sign of any Protectorate presence. The terrain was every bit as barren and dry as it had appeared from the air, except for the ribbon of the river that shone in the morning sun. But that seemed to be miles away. They had come down on a rise in the lower foothills of the mountain range, and ahead of them was nothing but dry, brownish desert.
He kept ending up in deserts. Kolyma, Takamagahara … and now this place. Wherever it was.
“Now, we get outta here.” Aarons gestured around at the wreck. “Call me crazy, but I don’t think this thing is flying again. If we stay here, we’ll die of thirst or hunger or probably both. Not to mention, the crash site has to be visible from the air, and I promise you, they’re still looking for us.”
Lochlan grunted. It sounded like reluctant agreement. “I can’t believe they didn’t catch where we went down as it happened. We keep getting lucky, I guess.”
Adam smiled thinly. “Yeah, well, I’m not into arguing with it.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and glanced back at the weak light coming from the hole behind them, wincing as pulled muscles in his shoulders twinged. Everything still hurt—if anything, twice as much as it had—and it was obvious that Lochlan and Aarons were no better off. Aarons a good bit worse, the blood from his wound painting his uniform, though the bullet had gone straight through, and Aarons had torn a strip of cloth away and bandaged it as well as he could. Traveling across country—especially across a desert—would be difficult. Perhaps even suicidal. But Aarons was right. They couldn’t stay.
Maybe their luck would hold.
“So let’s get going.” Aarons shoved himself to his feet, groaning, and pulled his makeshift pack—made from wiring and the cloth from ruined seats—over his shoulder. They each had one, Lochlan and Aarons with canteens of water that had probably been there a while, all three with dry rations found in a supply cupboard in the back of the shuttle. It was meager, but it would have to do. “While we still have daylight. I got no idea how long the days are on this rock but we shouldn’t get confident.”
“What about Kerry?” Adam asked softly. “What should we do with his body?”
Aarons frowned. “Don’t know that there’s much we can do. We can’t bury him, we don’t have the tools to dig, and I’m not wild about the idea of cremation. I guess we could use trithosite for accelerant, but smoke and flame would draw even more attention than we already have.”
“Then let the ship be his tomb,” Lochlan said, and there was something about his tone and cadence—almost formal, reminding Adam vaguely of Adisa—that made Adam study him, searching for any sign of mocking.
There was none. Adam touched Lochlan’s knee and nodded, hoping that Lochlan could read his gratitude.
One didn’t have to like the dead to honor them.
When they stepped onto the hard-packed dirt, Adam’s stomach sank. The landscape was more barren than it had seemed before, the river distant and the ground between them and it hilly. Low clouds drifted across a small, pale sun, and as soon as they were a few yards away from the crash, Adam looked back and saw the mountain range, its peaks blunt and dusted with snow. Between them and it, dark clouds rolled, promising storms. The air itself was chilly, and he wished that they had come dressed in something other than their own light flying clothes.
Of everything that he had imagined happening to them, death by exposure hadn’t been on the list.
Moving warmed him a bit, and he drew closer to Lochlan, though the heat he felt from the other man’s body was
probably in his head. In the meantime, he continued to scan the land around them, searching for a sign of anything they could use—plant life, an animal, other sources of water. People. Anything.
The desert resembled the Plain, but it felt completely different. The wind whipped across the flats and up into the hills they moved over, and there was none of that stillness that marked the Plain of Heaven: the held breath of its power. Takamagahara was a desert, but it wasn’t a wasteland. This was.
Lochlan caught Adam’s arm and pointed. “Over there.”
A few yards away, there sat a cluster of small tufts of some grasslike plant. It didn’t appear particularly edible, but Adam glanced back at Aarons, who had also halted. “You see it? We should check it out.”
“Waste of time, if you ask me. That shit looks about as eating-worthy as hair.” But he started toward it, hefting his pack again, grumbling under his breath.
Aaron’s estimation turned out to be correct. The grass was devoid of moisture, fine and wispy, but it was alive: when Lochlan tore a blade of it, the inside was a light green. Things were growing. There might be more.
“We’ll keep an eye out,” Lochlan said, straightening up. “Wonderful, we can graze like cows.”
“If we’re lucky,” Aarons said dryly. “Let’s stop dawdling, gentlemen.”
They reached flatter land and the river by midafternoon and stood on its banks, surveying it. It was wide but appeared shallow, and there was a faint orange tint to the water. It smelled, a metallic odor that burned slightly in the nose.
Adam’s mouth tightened, and he shot Lochlan a grim look. “No way we’re drinking that.”
“No?” Lochlan chuckled thinly. “You sure? I know resorts where it’d be labeled ‘rejuvenating mineral water’ and sold for fifty credits a bottle.”
“I don’t feel especially in need of rejuvenation.” Aarons sighed and scanned the bank. “Well, we have a choice now. Forward, left, or right.”
“It might be good to follow it downstream.” Adam squinted left, into the distance. Nothing but more of the same, but given that, they had little to lose by taking the chance. “If there are any settlements here at all …”
Fall and Rising Page 11
