“You ripped out the speaker!” she says, squeezing my ass with her hand.
“We will do this again, Anya,” I say, but I push her off me and grab the gun.
“But we are about to land,” I say. “And I promised to protect you.”
She grins, and our car deactivates as it touches down. I open the door and step out.
“Yo’, man,” someone shouts. “You can’t–oh shit, that’s not a man! It’s a fucking Marauder!”
I rush toward him and grab him by the collar. I rasp into his face in my scariest voice, “YOU SAW NOTHING HERE! Do you understand?”
He squeals, then answers, “Yeah, nothing man, nothing!”
I let him go and he falls down onto his back.
“Come,” I say to Anya, reaching out for her hand.
We enter the docking platform, which is almost a separate entity from the main space of the city. It’s dark when we step inside.
The lights start to turn on once it senses our movement.
“No one was in here,” Anya says. “That’s good…”
“Is it?” I say, looking through the platform. There’s only one ship, and it looks as if it’s about to fall apart.
“Shit,” she says. “Your suit can’t hack into that thing, it’s too old. It looks fully manual…”
“Wait here,” I say, and I run back outside.
The man I knocked to the ground is now standing and dusting himself off, but he starts to sprint away when he sees me coming back for him.
I catch up to him quickly and snatch him off his feet.
“Shit, man, I didn’t see anything! Why are you naked? Jesus!”
“Quiet!” I say, pulling him toward the docking platform. “This is your ship?”
“Yeah, man,” he says, as I haul him onto the platform. “The Aerith, it’s named after–”
“I don’t care,” I say. “Take us away from here.”
“I just got here…” he says.
“You don’t want to be here. Trust me,” Anya says. “What’s your name?”
“Tomas. And yeah, I do want to be here!” he says. “I finally escaped the Empire. It’s been my dream to see Sankt Petersburg, and–”
“The Empire has just taken over Venus,” I say.
His face turns white. “Shit, man, I shot like–”
He puts his hand over his mouth, then says, “No, I didn’t shoot anyone, unless you two are enemies of the Empire, then maybe–”
“Just get us on the ship,” Anya snaps.
He nods, and fumbles through his pockets for the keys.
He unlocks the ship and we follow him on board.
He hits a bunch of switches as soon as we enter the cockpit, and the ship slowly starts to hum to life.
“You want to get off this platform as soon as possible,” I say. “General Bahamut is hunting us.”
“Fuck!” Tomas says, and he starts hitting switches even faster, before plopping himself down into the pilot’s seat.
“Sit down on those couches over there,” Tomas instructs, pointing to the side wall.
Anya and I sit down on one of the couches next to each other.
“There are no safety harnesses, Tomas,” Anya says.
“Yeah,” Tomas says. “Let me know you’re going to kidnap me and steal my ship in advance next time, and I’ll order some extra equipment for you.”
The ship powers up, and he hits the throttle.
We start to fly off the docking platform and head toward the bay door. There’s not an airlock here–the bay door just opens long enough for a ship to pass, so little oxygen is lost.
But Tomas cuts the throttle as we approach. “Shit, it won’t open,” he says.
“Food!” I shout.
“What? You want to take my food, too–”
“Give him food!” Anya urges. “Hurry!”
Tomas points to the back of the ship, and Anya rushes into what looks to be a small kitchen. She raids a cabinet, throwing dozens of sticks of jerky back to where I’m still sitting on the couch.
Jerky. Again.
I tear into it, devouring four or five sticks at a time.
“Holy crap, man,” Tomas says. “You’re a monster.”
My armor melts across me and begins to harden as I swallow the last of the jerky. I shove up next to Thomas in the pilot’s seat, and I pull open the side window.
I stick the top half of my body out the window, and I point my hand at the bay door.
I feel the hunger rip across me already as I charge up the shot, and I nearly pass out as I blast a thick beam of plasma into the bay door.
The door melts to liquid metal and drips away, and I fall back inside.
Tomas shuts the window before too much Venusian atmosphere can leak in, and he hits the accelerator and whisks us into the Venusian sky.
9 Anya
“Drop down two thousand meters,” I say to Tomas.
“My ship isn’t rated to handle that depth,” Tomas says, forcing a smile.
“When was your ship made?” I ask.
“Oh,” Tomas says, “a good eighty years ago. I inherited it from my father–”
“So when the ship was made, terraforming of Venus was eighty years behind now. You realize the pressure is much lower overall? Even the cities float lower than they did eighty years ago. And I thought you said you just arrived from off-world? How did you inherit the ship if you just arrived? This ship is only designed to fly on Venus.”
I don’t trust this guy, but it’s probably not wise to call him out on all of his lies like this.
“Ah,” Tomas says, wincing. “It’s a long story, if you sit back I can tell you a tale–”
“No,” Aegus snaps. “Do what she says. Or else.”
Tomas grins. “Okay then, dropping altitude to forty kilometers! I sure hope this doesn’t kill us all.”
“The jungles are lower down,” I say. “There’s more carbon dioxide the lower you get. And...this part was supposed to be classified, but the tribes are actually accelerating the terraforming. They’re doing something to the forests to make them more efficient.”
Tomas looks at me nervously. I don’t know if I believe his story about coming from off-world, and the way he looks at me makes me think he knows I’m the Tsarevna–no, the Tsarina–but he’s yet to admit any knowledge of it, nor has he addressed me in any way at all. He’s avoided saying my name or talking to me entirely.
Even though I don’t trust him, I do feel bad for putting him in this situation, and–should he be captured by the Imperials–if he wants plausible deniability that he helped the rogue Tsarina, I won’t deny him that.
“Okay, we’re at the new altitude,” Tomas says. “And the ship hasn’t been crushed like a tin can, so I guess you’re right. How do we find the jungles? How many of them are there even?”
“Thousands,” I whisper. “Just keep flying until your scanner picks up something.”
“Scanner?” Tomas asks. “You mean my peepers?” He points to his eyes.
“What?” Aegus says, nearly strangling him. “This ship has no sensors of any kind?”
“You might want to steal a better ship next time,” Tomas says. “Look, though, if there’s thousands of these things at this altitude, we just keep flying until we hit one.”
“How is visibility?” Aegus asks. “We will not actually hit it before you can slow down. Correct?”
“As long as someone keeps their peepers wide open, we should be able to stop in time. I’m going to go have a nap though,” Tomas says. “If you see one of the jungles, just holler at me, and I should be able to–”
“Show me which control,” Aegus says, gritting his teeth.
“Oh,” Tomas says. “If you see the jungle, just pull this lever all the way down, and you’ll come to a halt. The jungle will be moving, though, so make sure you wake me up quickly so I can get us onto it.”
“Go take your nap,” Aegus says, side-eyeing Tomas.
As soon as Tomas disappears into his
cabin, Aegus shakes his head. “Human males are weak and inept! They can’t be relied on for anything!”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “What about Donovan? He could have escaped with us, but volunteered to stay back in the lion’s den to help me.”
“An exception,” Aegus says, crossing his arms.
“Well,” I say, “human men can’t rely on crazy jerky-powered armor that can do almost anything.”
“I don’t rely on my armor,” Aegus says. “I am a formidable warrior even with no weapons.”
“Yeah,” I say, “because you can turn into a giant purple bear. That took me by surprise, by the way. Why can you turn into a bear, exactly?”
“Evolution across all planets is very similar. We found this ‘bear’ animal on a planet millennia ago, and we incorporated it into our DNA.”
“So that you could transform into a big purple bear?”
“No,” he says, “so that we could hibernate on our trips across the stars.”
“And this is your last trip?” I ask, skeptical.
I’d heard what his faction believes. Marauder DNA in a child has always meant that it was impossible to interbreed among Marauders. The only way–for thousands of years–for Marauders to reproduce was to fly to new solar systems and find untouched DNA. But supposedly, humans are the end of the line. Human-Marauder offspring can reproduce with both Marauders and humans. They no longer need to travel from star to star; they can settle down.
“If things go my way,” Aegus says. “If my plan is executed successfully…”
“I guess this whole thing with Bahamut isn’t getting your plan off to a good start?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “But the solution will now be much easier than before.”
“What’s the solution?”
“I kill him.”
“There!” I shout, pointing.
Aegus has fallen asleep on the couch, and the floating jungle appears from through the clouds just in front of us. We’re suddenly on top of it.
I pull back the lever that Tomas showed me, and the engines cut to a low hum.
“Tomas!” I shout. “Aegus, wake him up!”
Aegus springs to his feet and starts pounding on Tomas's door.
The ship still has momentum, and it floats closer to the jungle even as it slows down.
Aegus is pounding on Tomas’s door like an animal.
The ship finally comes to a halt, and I see that the jungle is floating relatively close to us–floating toward us. It’s nearly as big as Sankt Petersburg, but instead of buildings, there are thick trees. The canopy reaches up to the air tanks, which are even larger than those of Sankt Petersburg. The trees suck carbon dioxide from Venus’s atmosphere, and then convert it to oxygen, which goes up into the air tanks–which keeps the jungle floating. There’s so much extra oxygen that the tanks have valves which slowly leak oxygen out into the atmosphere. With thousands of jungles doing this, Venus’s atmosphere is slowly losing carbon dioxide and gaining oxygen. In a few hundred years, we may be able to live in super-tall buildings many kilometers high in the sky. In a thousand, we may be able to walk on the surface.
“Tomas!” I shout.
I look back, and Aegus rams the door with his shoulder.
“He’s gone,” Aegus says. “There’s...a note.”
“Does the note explain how to pilot the ship?”
“No,” Aegus says. “It says he used the escape pod to hitch a ride with his friend. He didn’t want to get executed if he were caught. I think he knew you were the Tsarevna…”
“I am the Tsar now, Aegus,” I say. “The Tsarina.”
“Allow me to drive,” Aegus says, nearly shoving me out of the seat.
“No,” I snap back, trying to shove his massive, muscular body away. He doesn’t budge, of course, but he gives up on removing me from the seat.
“I think I figured these controls out...mostly,” I say.
“We’re going to hit the forest,” Aegus says.
His body is tense, he really wants to take over the controls and doesn’t seem to trust me. I guess men are the same across the galaxy.
I pull the lever in the opposite direction, slowly at first.
The engines whirr, and I feel a light jerk signaling that we are beginning to move backward.
“This one must be altitude,” I say, pointing to another lever. I move it down just a few notches.
The ship begins to ascend.
“Wrong direction!” Aegus says. “Of course it’s inverted!”
“Of course?” I say, moving the lever in the opposite direction. “You’re just saying that to sound like you were right all along.”
Aegus crosses his arms, and the ship begins to descend.
I adjust both levers, and soon we are slowly descending toward the jungle. We’re not moving fast enough for there to be any risk of a dangerous impact. If it looks like we’re close to hitting the dome, I can simply pull back the lever and stop within seconds.
“Luckily this ship’s controls are quite simple,” Aegus says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say, smiling.
He narrows his eyes at me, and his ears pull back.
“Do you know what a backhanded compliment is?” I ask.
“I will search the ship for any rations, and look for ways to store water,” he says, ignoring my question.
As he walks away, I shout back to him, “You’re really good at giving backhanded compliments, asshole!”
As I near the dome walls, I can clearly see the massive trees through the transparent dome. The top of the dome is nearly opaque, covered in condensation. When it reaches full saturation, it supposedly rains within the jungle. I’ve never felt rain in my life–the idea of water just falling out of the sky unnerves me.
“I found rations,” Aegus says, coming back to my side. He throws down a pile of vacuum-sealed food.
“No real food?” I ask.
“I already ate everything in the refrigeration unit,” he says, burping.
“Everything?” I ask. “So you eat the good stuff, and I eat the vacuum-packed garbage?”
“Not everything,” Aegus says. “There was very little left in there. Some eggs, some milk, and some chocolate.”
“Chocolate?” I say, taking my hands off the controls. “You bastard, you–”
He holds up a bar of chocolate, unopened.
“Saved it for you,” he says, plopping it down on the dashboard.
He walks away before I can thank him.
“Wait,” I say. “I didn’t hear you cooking. How did you eat the eggs?”
“I bit into the shell and sucked out the innards,” he says. “Delicious.”
“It’s almost a good thing that you never sat down to have dinner with my father,” I say.
I feel a pang of pain and anger when I think of my father. It still doesn’t feel like he’s really gone. I haven’t had time to even think, let alone grieve.
“I can force myself to eat with human manners,” Aegus says. “I just prefer not to. It’s pointless.”
“Manners separate us from animals,” I say, lowering our acceleration even further as we approach the docking bay.
“No,” Aegus says. “A few hundred thousand years of evolution separate you from animals, while tens of millions of years separate Marauders from animals.”
“Didn’t you transform into a giant bear?” I say. “Like, just a few hours ago? Tens of millions of years, my ass.”
Aegus grunts and walks away.
10 Aegus
Anya manages to operate the simplistic controls well enough to bring us successfully into the docking bay. The jungle has already started overtaking the bay. There are thick roots and vines spreading through it, and the docking machinery itself is even covered in grassy vines and leaves.
We manage to anchor Tomas’s ship to the bay, and when I plug in the thick power cord, it seems to charge successfully.
“We think the tribes maintai
n these,” Anya says.
“Think?” I ask. “Didn’t you create these jungles?”
“We created them, yes,” she says. “And it used to take huge amounts of resources to maintain them. We had to send teams of highly educated scientists to the jungles–paying them hefty salaries–just to make sure the ecosystems were perfectly balanced. At first, entire jungles would die off from the smallest errors or neglect.”
My ears perk up, and I connect the dots. “I see, but over time these scientists became ‘the tribes,’ and they do this work for free now.”
Anya nods. “But in exchange, they get autonomy. We haven’t had any control over what the tribes do for nearly a century.”
“Now I am here,” I say. “I will compel them to act, with your help.”
“I told you,” she says. “I can’t compel the tribes to do anything. I have no control over them.”
“Things have changed,” Aegus says. “If the Marauders who want to obliterate humanity have their way, it will only be a matter of time before they eradicate the tribes. They will not look the other way as your father did.”
Anya is still wearing a dress, which clings to her body in all the right places. It’s easily the worst thing she could wear to be traipsing through a jungle environment, but there is nothing else on the ship for her to wear.
I am, of course, naked. Normally this would feel quite comfortable, but not with Anya’s wandering eyes. She acts like she can’t stand me, but I will not forget that we kissed, nor can I ignore the way her eyes roam across my body.
My biosuit is fully exhausted, and it will take a great deal of food to power it up again. Much more than we found in Tomas’s ship, and more–I fear–than we can find in the entire jungle. I should have no real need for the suit in the jungle and among the tribes, but if the Imperial forces track us down and my suit is not powered, it will be a difficult fight.
Anya finishes loading up her satchel with rations, then slings it onto her back. The strap presses down between her breasts, making them extremely prominent and visible.
“You will regret wearing this dress into the jungle,” I say. “It’s best to follow my lead,” I add, looking down at my naked body.
“You want me to walk around naked with you?”
Marauder Aegus Page 5
