by Lucas Bale
She reached for a chair to steady herself; as soon as her hand closed around the plexi-resin, she seized it as hard as she could and hauled herself up. Ignoring the tortured protests of the vines and the lifeboat’s pendulum swing, she climbed quickly, concentrating on reaching the hatch and getting out.
The air was cooler the moment her head came out, followed by her shoulders and torso, and then, with a final pull, her legs.
She fumbled for vines, pulling three or four strands tightly together as the lifeboat swayed beneath her feet. She wrapped them around her wrists and tried to climb away from the lifeboat’s creaking hull. When she found the bark of a tree, she swung a leg over it and turned back to the lifeboat. It now hung at a severe tilt, and it was slipping slowly downwards as some of the vines finally gave way. Natasha felt the trunk bending with it, the lifeboat pulling the entire tree down.
She climbed quickly, desperate to get to another tree, but the gap to the nearest was too large to climb; she would have to jump. She eyed the drop to the jungle floor. No use thinking about that now—just jump, or you’re going down with the boat.
The lifeboat pitched forward with increasing speed. Vines whipped around Natasha, snapping at her face as they were sheared through by the momentum of the heavy steel hull. The boat uttered a hollow whine as it fell, like an injured whale bleeding into some vast ocean and crying in pain as it arced through cold water. The tree buckled with the force of the movement, and she fought to get a footing solid enough to jump from. Instead, she stumbled forward—and realised there was no time.
She jumped.
She was only in the air for an instant—a few seconds of flailing arms and legs that scissored as much from fear as to give her momentum. She reached for the tree, certain she wasn’t going to make it. Her fingers stretched, and before she realised how far she had jumped, she felt the tree’s bark. She seized it frantically, bringing her legs round and doing anything she could to hold on.
Pain exploded in her arm where the blood still flowed freely, and she struggled to force herself not to let go. It swept over her in waves and made her woozy. She bit her lip and growled some Samarkandian curse—she couldn’t say exactly what—and gripped the tree tighter.
Surging upwards, swirling around her, came the sounds of the lifeboat crashing through the trees and then splintering as it hit the ground. She looked down and saw it, still relatively whole but misshapen and with two broad cracks in the hull. A chaos of vines and leaves covered it like some insane floral blanket. For a moment, she wondered whether it might have been better to have dislodged the lifeboat first, instead of creeping around inside while it was suspended, and immediately felt stupid. Bit late now, she thought bitterly. Better if you’d had that idea before you tore a hole in your damn arm.
Slowly, slipping several times, she climbed down. When her feet touched the jungle floor, she nearly collapsed with relief. She pulled off the suit and immediately felt cooler.
Inside the survival pack, she found a medkit and dressed the wound on her arm, as well as a number of other smaller wounds she’d had no idea she’d received. She found a jacket and slipped it through the straps of the pack. In the jungle, it would be too warm to wear it, but she had no idea if it might get cold at night. She turned the navmodule on and looked around, focusing it until it found the direction she needed.
Then she began to walk towards the mountains.
C H A P T E R 9
ELIAS SAT on a bench in a small park on the edge of the canton of Barents. The sunlight caught the gleaming tavara stretching upwards around him, and the air shimmered as the warm haze of late morning settled on the galleries and walkways. Children played on the lush grass, their parents watching over them, smiling at their unrestrained frolics. Theia in full bloom is a beautiful sight, he thought, and he allowed himself a quiet smile.
His gaze drifted to the three moons floating in the sky like perfect, spherical clouds—chalk-white, and etched with ancient rift valleys and impact craters. Orbiting them were vast colonial stations that, on a clear day when there was no haze, could just about be seen from Theia with the most powerful oculars. Even then they were only tiny, glistening motes in the sky. He didn’t know why the Magistratus had constructed such complex, low-orbital structures and set them to circle the moons; their presence wasn’t even openly acknowledged. But what went on there had always intrigued him. And for as long as he had wondered what it was the Magistratus had built up there, he had asked himself, too, what more there was to his own planet’s surface beyond the city’s cantons.
Questions are dangerous, Elias, his mother had told him when he was a boy. No, his father had replied. It’s the answers that are dangerous.
Dangerous, Elias had come to realise, but necessary.
The surface of Theia was expansive, stretching far beyond the breathtaking panorama that could be witnessed from the galleries and tavara. On the other side of glaciated, snow-clad mountains, dense primeval forest and wild grey seas, lay an unknown wilderness—a world to be explored, but a world that was kept from them. Theia itself—or rather the city for which the planet had been named—was the only settlement anyone who lived in the Core was aware of. No spacecraft were allowed to fly outside the permitted zones that led directly from the tunnel’s breach down to the main port. As far as Elias was aware, no independent spacecraft had ever flown over the landscape outside the city. So much is kept from us, he thought. We are controlled, and we know so little about where we came from, who we are, and what the future holds for us.
While he was lost in thought, a woman sat next to him. He didn’t turn to look at her, but instead concentrated on the children as they played. He knew who she was and why she had come.
‘We shouldn’t meet here,’ the woman said quietly. ‘One hour. The place we first met, if you can remember that. And you absolutely must make sure you aren’t followed. Take every precaution you can.’ Before he could respond, she stood and was gone.
He knew exactly where she meant, and he could walk there in less than fifteen minutes. The fact that she had given him an hour to lose anyone who might be following him told him a great deal about the concern he had detected in her voice.
He watched the children for a while longer, wondering what part they would have to play in the empty future of mankind. Childhood should be an open meadow filled with dreams, he thought. An endless world of possibilities. Not some bleak wilderness such as this, constrained by walls and devoid of hope.
He snorted at the irony of the gunship that rumbled low overhead, kicking up a choking wind that rolled across the park. A great black beast, relentlessly prowling between the galleries and walkways, watching and recording alongside the network of cameras that suffocated the city. He shielded his eyes as he stared at it, and then he looked back at the children standing still on the grass. He found himself wondering whether any of them might one day become Peacekeepers themselves. As he watched them play, it was impossible to imagine any of them as emotionless, brutish, and merciless killers; unthinkable that one of them could end a life, let alone do so without feeling the pain of it in their souls. But every Peacekeeper had once been a child, and perhaps some had even played in this park, years before unknown processes had turned them into dispassionate, barren nightmares.
When the gunship was gone, Elias rose and walked away.
Sarin Ilyich Aluson Romanov had been born into a higher caste than Elias, but on the eve of her sixteenth birthday she had chosen the conscientia. She was a dilettante playing the game for the thrill of it, rather than because of need. That single choice had told Elias everything he had needed to know about her, long before he had even met her, and it had been his experience of her ever since. He should have despised her for it—their backgrounds so utterly incompatible, their motivations in stark opposition—but he never had.
Physically, she was not beautiful—rather, she might have been described as handsome—but in the movements of her body he found her seductive, yet
elegant, and in her words he found intelligence and passion. Now, in the dusty half-light of a tiny cellar, her slim and delicate face was almost completely hidden beneath her hood, the dimness catching only the pale skin on her cheekbones and small nose, the soft gleam of her watchful blue eyes. The rest of the coat was shaped enough to contour her willowy body. Elias wished, not for the first time, that they had been able to meet more often, and that it had not always been about the conscientia.
‘Must I ask if you were careful?’ she said from the corner of the room.
‘You already know the answer to that,’ he said. He scanned the room quickly, but saw nothing that particularly attracted his attention. The walkways above them, seen through narrow windows, which accounted for the dimness of the light, were quiet at this time of day. Most citizens would be undertaking their duties, as demanded by their cantons, but still he listened, automatically, for any sound that might indicate that she had led him here to be detained.
‘After this, we’re even.’ Her lips were thin and tight, and she shook her head sharply as she spoke. Unusually, he detected a nervous edge to her tone. ‘We won’t meet again.’
‘You’re being melodramatic,’ he replied.
She huffed slightly and shook her head again before smoothing the thin lapels of her coat against her chest. ‘You have no idea yet what your canton is involved in?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said. A small lie, he thought as he uttered the word. But I’m beginning to think there is far more to be known than I might ever choose to learn. ‘Why don’t you enlighten me?’
‘You amuse me, as you always have,’ she said, glancing around the cellar. ‘But I don’t want to get involved. You’re lucky I came at all.’
‘Calm down, Sarin,’ he said. ‘You’re angry. Tell me why.’
She straightened, and Elias saw her purse her lips. She folded her slender arms across her chest and stared at him. ‘Barents is about to sever all ties with your canton. Any allegiance between the two cantons will be outwardly revoked.’
Elias was stunned by this, but he managed to contain his surprise. To publicly end an allegiance would inevitably lead to a private, and very intense, political war. Barents would be making a powerful enemy by stepping away from a Consul’s favour so overtly. But they must know that, he thought.
‘When will the announcement be made?’ he asked her, keeping his voice even. He felt his skin grow hot.
‘Today, at the evening khana. It will be confirmed in the Omphalos later on. The Quorum has been asked to convene especially for the announcement to be formalised.’
‘Why would they do such a thing? They must know what it would lead to.’
‘I don’t know, and I genuinely don’t want to know. They aren’t the only canton either, Elias. At least one other is going to follow suit. I don’t know which, but it won’t be long.’
Elias turned away from her, frowning. His canton would be weakened by these events. The Consul’s power would be affected. Was it a prelude to something else? Why now?
He glanced at her over his shoulder. ‘And Jieshou?’ he asked.
She paused before answering. He was sure she was searching his face for emotion, looking for whatever tics might give him away. ‘Why did you ask about Jieshou, Elias?’ she said. ‘Why did you want to me to make enquiries into that place?’
He kept his voice even and set his expression. ‘You said you didn’t want to know.’
She nodded. She had seen nothing, he was sure. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I don’t. I heard there is nothing left. A privateering company, I don’t know which, entered the lower atmosphere and attacked the City. I don’t know any more than that, but I don’t think it takes much imagination to picture what happened there.’
‘How could they hope to get away with—’
‘Get away with what?’ she said. ‘Jieshou is no longer under the protection of the Magistratus. What is there to stop them?’
‘But a whole city?’ Elias found it hard to believe. He had sent the Caestor there—as he had been ordered to. But why? Certainly, there could be no coincidence in the timing of the attack.
There came a heavy silence between them then. Elias swallowed hard and took in a breath. Even thinking the name hurt him. ‘And Idris?’ he said finally.
Her head dropped slightly, and he saw a sudden pained sadness in her face. This did not in itself surprise him—she had known Idris well enough, possibly even liked him, if she could be said to have liked anyone—but it reminded him too abruptly of how much he had cared for his friend, and how much he had begun to miss him.
‘I did as you asked,’ she said quietly. ‘I was able to discover something of what he was tasked to do before he was killed. There’s not much, and it means nothing to me. Perhaps it will mean more to you.’ She paused and looked at Elias as she handed him a nano-drive. ‘I know how close you were. I’m sorry.’ For a moment, he believed she meant it.
‘As am I.’
Sarin rested her hand on his arm as he took the drive. There was tenderness in her eyes now, something he had barely seen from her in a long while; overt displays of affection were unusual for her. ‘Elias, of all of us, you are one of the most talented. You know I do not easily say that. We all play a dangerous game, and we all came to it for different reasons. We know the risks and we accept them. That’s the truth of the conscientia. But I think you should leave this alone. Whatever your canton is doing, it can’t end well, and you should carefully consider your place in it.’
‘When you handle vipers, you know you might get bitten. It would be short-sighted not to have an antivenin.’ It was flippant and intended to sound defiant rather than sardonic, but he immediately regretted it. She deserved more than that.
But Sarin nodded slowly, as though she’d found sincerity in the words. Still, there was doubt in her face. After so many years of maintaining a cold distance between them, it was strange for her to suddenly show him such overt affection. As if she thinks she’s saying goodbye.
She turned away from him and left without another word. He watched her go, and, not for the first time, he felt something heavy tugging inside him. He had held her in his arms once, smelled the perfume in her hair, and felt the tingle of her lips on his. A mistake, they had both agreed afterwards. The only true passion they could ever share was the conscientia. To have other ties was to have weaknesses to be exploited. He sighed, and allowed some time to pass before he left himself.
C H A P T E R 10
GANT WATCHED the ship plunge towards the planet’s surface. It rocked in the sky as if it had no pilot to control it, and he knew it would hit hard. Despite this, its course surprised him. Although he was certain that the fires—there was a second now, not far from the first—were meant as signals for the ship, it was in fact arcing away from them, towards the high mountains that stretched behind their small colony of huts. There was nothing out there except a remote, unforgiving landscape, much drier than the humid jungle, and with only a few natural paths across the cols and passes between the huge mountain summits.
Almost instantly he saw the danger, and his heart grew cold. If those were signal fires, if the chukiri were expecting this ship to come to them and it did not, they would go looking for it. Even if they weren’t expecting it, they would want to see what it contained. And to get to it, the chukiri might easily take paths through the mountains that passed close to the huts. The risk that the chukiri might spot one of the structures was suddenly higher than it had ever been.
Low now, perhaps only a hundred metres up, the freighter soared over the hut, shrieking like a wounded bird. Gant watched it disappear behind the mountains, taking its noise with it. He waited for an explosion—some sign that it had hit—but there was only a distant rolling echo that sounded like thunder. After a few seconds, a thin spire of smoke drifted into the night sky, almost invisible in the twilight.
Gant ran back inside.
‘Every one of you,’ he shouted. ‘Back to you
r huts. Put out all the lights. Gather every weapon you can and get your people ready at their emergency posts.’
‘Ready for what?’ Bradman growled. ‘What the hell is happening, Gant?’
But Gant ignored him and turned to Nikolaj. His first instinct had been to tell the young man to run to the other huts—to get them prepared to fight—but he realised he needed Nikolaj with him.
‘Pack enough kit for both of us for a long trip into the mountains. And get our rifles and ammunition.’
Nikolaj didn’t hesitate, and Gant was thankful he didn’t ask questions. He simply nodded and disappeared through the door.
‘Will.’ Kayt this time, her hand on his arm. ‘What was that light? And that ship that passed over us? What are you thinking?’
He turned to her. There was fear floating in her green eyes—he’d seen it there before and recognised it now—even though her face appeared still and calm. But that had always been her way. She would never admit to anyone that she was afraid, preferring instead to quietly shoulder her burdens, and so often those of others too. He admired her more at that moment than he ever had before—her resilience, her stubbornness, even towards him. Of everyone in the huts, he understood her place in the Kolyma fleet the least. He could imagine most of the others coming to the attention of the Caesteri or Peacekeepers, for whatever reason, right or wrong. But Kayt—he had never been able to envision a situation where she would end up on the wrong side of the Magistratus. Her accent gave her away as Theian, and thus from the Core, so initially there had been some of those in the small community, even in those early days, that had been mistrustful of her. But she had won them over through sheer force of will and bare-knuckled hard work. She was devoted to her hut, and through that devotion she had earned their respect as well as his.
