Heir Ascendant (Faded Skies Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  “Yep. Unload the driver, install the card, update the driver, and open the door for Brennan back at the Hangar.”

  “Right.” He handed her the component.

  She took the card in both hands. “Thanks.”

  “No.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Thank you.”

  “How much time?”

  “Two hours about.”

  Maya backed up. “Okay.”

  She ran to the end of the hall and banged on Sarah’s door for a little over two minutes before an annoyed moan came from inside.

  Sarah pulled the door open and stood there looking dazed, her hair wild, one eye closed, and nothing on other than the dirt up to her knees and elbows. “What? It’s still early.”

  “Uhh, where’s your dress?”

  Sarah yawned. “I was asleep. You woke me up. Dad said it’s not healthy to wear the same thing all the time and sleep in it too, and it was hot last night.”

  “You don’t have a nightgown?”

  “What for? There’s sheets and a blanket.”

  A heavy snore came from the back hallway.

  Maya frowned. “He needs to get you some clothes.”

  “He needs his b―”

  “He needs to take proper care of you.” Maya folded her arms. “If he won’t, I will.”

  Sarah looked down, kicking her toes at the carpet. “Umm, with what money?”

  “I…” Maya scowled, grabbing at the air in frustration. The girl had a point. “But… it’s not… You have a damn curtain held on with pins. It’s not even a real dress.”

  Sarah leaned her head back and let out a long yawn at the ceiling. She stood straight again, blinked a few times, and offered a weary smile. “No one will steal a scrap like that. Look, thanks, but I’m okay. Really… it’s cool. What’s up? Why’d you drag me out of bed so early?”

  “Come on. I gotta show you something.”

  Sarah drifted back into the apartment, leaving the door half open. “Okay. Gimme a sec to get dressed.”

  “Sorry for waking you.” Maya fidgeted with the component. “I promise it’s important.”

  Sarah trudged down the hallway to her bedroom, yawning again. Maya kicked at the shredded carpeting for a little while, trying to formulate a way to get her friend real clothing. Eventually, Sarah returned in the only set of clothes she owned: the yellowing curtain-dress held together by safety pins. She still looked ready to close her eyes and go straight back to sleep.

  “Are we going outside? You’ve got your sneakers on.”

  “Sort of.” Maya winked. “It’s a surprise.”

  She went downstairs to collect Pick, stopped by Zoe’s to get Emily, and climbed up to the ninth floor to wake the twins. With her entourage complete, Maya led the way to the top of the stairs and the roof access, a heavy steel door painted pale grey. She rammed herself into the push bar, having to heave with her whole body to open it. The kids followed her outside.

  “Be careful,” said Sarah. “It’s not safe up here. There’s spots that’ll fall in.”

  Maya examined a route from where she stood to a green metal structure about the size of a cargo van near the center with vent slats on the side and a complicated panel of dials. Whatever the machine had been in life, it no longer worked. On top of it sat the orange and white antenna Barnes had described. Made of interlocking metal bars, the transmission tower stretched about fifteen feet higher than the dead machinery. An intact black wire as thick as her wrist emerged from a hole in the roof and ran up the side to a little past the halfway part, where an open cabinet the size of a suitcase emanated faint glowing light.

  The kids followed her across the roof to the enormous box. Maya used an open hatch for a ladder, stepping on internal machinery to climb to the top of the old air handler.

  “Maya!” yelled Sarah. “You’re going to fall. Get down.”

  “I’m okay. I gotta do this. Genna’s too heavy.” She held up the device Barnes gave her. “It’s important. I’m not doing it to be reckless like Pick. I need to go up to the computer.”

  Sarah held a hand over her eyes to block the morning sun. “What idiot put it all the way up there?”

  “Barnes said it’s to keep scavvers and dosers from damaging or stealing it,” said Maya.

  “Yo.” Anton patted the green metal side of the air handler twice. “Be careful, right?”

  “Yeah, umm.” Marcus fidgeted. “Don’t get hurt.”

  Pick stuffed his finger up his nose and smirked at her.

  She faced the antenna. After tucking the electronic box in the waist of her pants, she grabbed on to the metal tubes and pulled herself upward. The wind felt as though it would push her off at any second. Each time the breeze picked up, it whipped her hair into her face. Twice, she got scared enough to cling until a stronger gust subsided. Sarah kept yelling at her to come down. Emily stayed quiet. It took both twins to hold Pick back from attempting to follow her because it looked fun.

  Three minutes later, Maya reached the computer box. Barnes said it had been months since they bothered using it since one of the boards had burned out. Between not having a reason to use it and no one really wanting to make the climb, it remained broken. At the bottom of the housing, a four-wheel physical code lock accepted 8157, and she pulled the outer shell open. Beneath an array of blinking lights and wiring, a horizontal rack held four components similar to the one she carried, only a bit older and more worn. The third unit from the left had black soot marks above and below it.

  That’s gotta be the right one.

  Amid the wires, she unfolded a tiny keyboard, which doubled as a protective covering for an eight-by-eight monochrome monitor, offering her a command prompt:

  relay-s5g9 #>

  Typing with one hand (since she refused to trust stability to only her legs holding on) took her a while, but she entered the commands Barnes had shown her.

  relay-s5g9 #> cardmanager disable chassis[0]:slot[3]

  After a few seconds’ delay, a message popped up:

  Disabling expansion card 4 in chassis 0:

  ** Stopping services … Success!

  ** Powering down … Success!

  The expansion card may now be safely removed from the control chassis.

  Maya braced her legs against the antenna tubes and tugged on the dead card in slot three until it came free with a jerk that nearly sent her flying off. Sarah screamed; had the girl not been struggling to hold Pick back, she probably would’ve come flying up the antenna. Maya tossed the dead component like a Frisbee. Eager to escape the pointy aluminum corners jabbing her in the thighs, she pulled the replacement out of her pants and removed the scrap of paper with the commands on it. She lined up the pins on the inside edge. It took a bit of fidgeting to get it slotted in the socket one-handed while clinging to a wobbly antenna twenty-some odd feet above the tenth floor roof. As soon as it stopped snagging, she slammed it home.

  When nothing caught fire, she returned to the keyboard, holding the paper scrap with her left hand, which also clamped around an aluminum tube to keep her steady.

  relay-s5g9 #> packager —force install

  2001:db8:85a3:0:0:8a2e:370:7334:/AuthlessVidSource.package

  A few seconds later, the screen showed:

  Connecting to repository 001:db8:85a3:0:0:8a2e:370:7334

  Resolving dependencies … No dependencies required.

  The machine sat there doing nothing for almost a minute. Maya twitched from worry, hoping she didn’t mistype anything. Wind made the scrap flutter against her hand. Terrified it would blow away to oblivion she squeezed as hard as she could. In the middle of her comparing her line to the contents of the paper, the screen flashed to life again.

  Downloading Packages:

  (1/1) AuthlessVidSource.package - 5.9MB/s - 00:00

  “Whew.” She slouched with relief until a gust made her cling tight to the aluminum tubing.

  “Come on!” Sarah pulled herself up to stand on top of the air handler, and grabbe
d the antenna tower. “Get down before you fall.”

  “I’m almost finished,” shouted Maya. “It won’t be long.”

  The download finished in fourteen seconds and the screen scrolled with more text, each line popping up a second or three after the one before it:

  Processing transaction

  Installing: AuthlessVidSource.package 1/1

  Cleanup: AuthlessVidSource.package 1/1

  Verifying: AuthlessVidSource.package 1/1

  Completed!

  Grinning, Maya reached up and one-finger typed the last command.

  relay-s5g9 #> AuthlessVidSource.service start

  The system thought about her command for a few seconds before the screen displayed:

  Listening for incoming video transmissions on port 59152.

  Starting service AuthlessVidSource … Success!

  The screen returned to an input prompt.

  relay-s5g9 #>

  That should let Brennan in… Maya bit her lip, staring at the prompt, wondering if she’d see him type or if his connection wouldn’t update the terminal. Before long, the entire cabinet lit up with a brilliant array of fiberoptics.

  “Yes!” She cheered.

  Maya closed the keyboard back against the screen before shutting the cabinet door, concealing the light within. Satisfied, she took a deep breath and climbed down. For no reason she could understand, working her way back to the roof scared her more than the climb up.

  Sarah grabbed her as soon as she could reach, holding on as Maya climbed to stand beside her. Once they got down off the ancient machine, the older girl flung her around and shoved her against the big green box. “What are you doing? Did you bring us up here to watch you fall and die?”

  “No. I had to fix the transmitter. Mr. Barnes said I was the best one to do it ‘cause I don’t weigh much and I know computers. Zoe would break the whole antenna.”

  “My mom isn’t fat,” said Emily.

  Sarah sighed. “Please stop doing dumb things.”

  “This isn’t dumb.” Maya hugged her. “It’s completely crazy.”

  “What did you do?” asked Anton, his eyebrows a flat line.

  “You’ll see.” Maya waved them to follow and walked to the north edge of the roof. She felt almost as nervous as if she’d pulled a gun on a blueberry, but at one thought of Ashley, and the others in the Fade ward, she dismissed any regrets.

  The wall around the perimeter came up to Maya’s shoulders. She folded her arms across the top and rested her chin on them. Pick ran off and returned dragging a plastic crate to stand on so he could see over it. Sarah stood at her right, clutching the top of the wall like a nervous weasel.

  “What are we waiting for?” asked Marcus.

  Maya glanced at him for a second or two before she resumed staring out at the Sanctuary Zone. “The truth.”

  She started telling them the story of what happened after she’d run off in the middle of the night, but stopped a few minutes in when Genna arrived. Her mother walked over and stood behind her, hands on her shoulders. Maya relayed her journey to everyone, apologizing several times for making them worry. A little over an hour later, around the time she detailed her leap off the drone into the reservoir, a subdued beep beep beep emanated from the box on the antenna.

  “It’s time.” Maya looked out at the city.

  “Whoa, wait.” Anton shook his head. “You rode a drone? For real? You can’t just stop there. What was it like?”

  Maya shivered. “The scariest thing I’ll ever do. I’ll never do that again.”

  “But what happened?” asked Marcus.

  “I’ll finish telling you later. This is more important.” Maya pointed out over the Hab toward the Sanc. “Look.”

  All the kids, plus Genna, tucked up to the wall.

  The change in scenery began subtle. An advertising holo-billboard across the street went dark. Then another. After a few seconds, they winked out in clusters of three or four, and distant screens, mere points of light in the Sanctuary Zone, went with them. In fifteen seconds more, the entire world in front of them had become dark of technology.

  All at once, Maya’s face appeared everywhere. Gone was the glammed up little girl dressed like a woman; instead, the world saw the real Maya. Dirty, hair askew, wearing a man’s black BDU shirt. Thousands of Mayas covered the landscape, from forty-foot tall close-ups of her face to full-body images standing in front of a generic beige cinderblock wall.

  Her voice spread like a tsunami of eerie calm over the city.

  “Hello. I am Maya Oman. Or at least, I used to be. The smiling princess you see every day is an illusion. My smile was fake. I was not happy. I said things that weren’t true. I have been lying to you. I said what I was told to say. Ascendant lies to you.

  “Fade should have disappeared ten years ago when World War Three ended. Ascendant made Xenodril to save people hurt by old governments who wanted to kill everyone they could not control.

  “Now, Ascendant makes Fade for only one reason―profit.”

  Maya’s image faded to reveal Ashley’s pleading face.

  “This is Ashley. She’s five. Her parents couldn’t afford Xenodril. Did you know that it costs Ascendant forty-seven cents to manufacture one dose of Xenodril, but they charge two hundred dollars for it? Ashley’s mom did love her. She didn’t buy Xenodril because she couldn’t afford it. Ashley’s mother can’t love her anymore because Ashley’s mother died to Fade.”

  Maya’s face reappeared on the screens.

  “Ashley’s mother, and thousands of other people, are dead for forty-seven cents. Ascendant wants to keep you scared. They own the Authority and they own everyone who gives in to fear. The Authority used to represent law. They used to be worth respecting. Now I have a question for the men and women of the Authority. Why do you look the other way while Ascendant turns you into thugs?”

  She paused for effect.

  A few of the screens fluttered out; no doubt, a war raged between the Brigade’s hackers and Ascendant’s network operations people.

  “Are you afraid?” asked video-Maya. “The masses can only be controlled if they remain frightened. Citizens, are you listening? There are five hundred of us to every one of you. When I walked the streets of the Sanctuary Zone, I heard you. I know that even Citizens are tired of being treated like cattle. Everyone complains about the drones in quiet grumbles, yet none of you will admit it out loud. Will you let your children grow up under the constant threat of flying guns? Will you let your grandchildren inherit a world where anyone who questions Ascendant disappears?”

  The camera zoomed in on Maya’s face.

  “I’m no longer Maya Oman. I’m just Maya. I am nine years old, and I am no longer afraid.”―the video closed in until her intense gold-brown eyes filled the screen―“Are you?”

  All the holograms and billboards went dark. Two seconds later, an image of the e-mail chain showing Vanessa ordering Fade production appeared. Shutdown spread like a creep, starting in the Sanctuary Zone and spreading out until it blackened all the displays in the Habitation District.

  Maya gasped. Zero got it!

  It seemed as if the entire world froze in stunned silence.

  Genna squeezed her shoulders, one tear running down her cheek.

  Sarah turned toward Maya, her face as pale as a dead girl’s. “What did you do?”

  Maya took her hand and held it tight. “I started a fire.” She waited a second before smiling. “Wanna play more Magic?”

  “Okay,” whispered Sarah. “At least until they kill us all.”

  “They won’t.” Maya smirked. “Not worth the cost.”

  Genna wiped at her eyes, nodding permission since she seemed unable to speak.

  Maya led the way to the stairs, eager to get off the dangerous roof. She paused by the door and glanced back over her shoulder at a faint rush in the air. The noise built and built, until the distant roar of thousands of angry people echoed in the streets.

  She smile
d.

  Maybe humanity wasn’t completely screwed.

  Thank you to everyone at Curiosity Quills for making Heir Ascendant a reality. Especially Lisa Gus for the suggestion to write the book. Originally, I conceived a short story (Innocent Deception) where Maya is abducted for ransom and saves herself by turning her captors against each other. The intent of the story was to create doubt as to whether Maya existed as a real person or an android.

  Lisa liked the story quite a bit, and some months later asked me if I had considered writing more in the world that it established. I told her I had, and I’d been stuck trying to decide between maybe aging Maya up to a teen or switching to Genna as a primary character. Her reaction was more or less a “No! Leave Maya nine!”―so I came up with the story you just read.

  So, a big thank you to Lisa, as without her suggestion, the book would not exist.

  A great thanks to Olivia Swenson for her wonderful assistance editing this novel.

  Many thanks to Eugene Teplitsky for the amazing cover art!

  Also, thanks go to Martin Capdevielle for Linux technical details.

  Born in a little town known as South Amboy NJ in 1973, Matthew Cox has been creating science fiction and fantasy worlds for most of his reasoning life. Somewhere between fifteen to eighteen of them spent developing the world in which Division Zero, Virtual Immortality, and The Awakened Series take place. He has several other projects in the works as well as a collaborative science fiction endeavor with author Tony Healey.

  Matthew is an avid gamer, a recovered WoW addict, Gamemaster for two custom systems (Chronicles of Eldrinaath [Fantasy] and Divergent Fates [Sci Fi], and a fan of anime, British humour (<- deliberate), and intellectual science fiction that questions the nature of reality, life, and what happens after it.