Sound

by Alexandra Duncan

  He raises an eyebrow. “Me and Tibbet?”

  I roll my eyes at him. “You know what I mean.”

  Rubio stays quiet a moment. He checks the altimeter and fuel readouts. “You know I have a little sister back at Apex?” he says finally.

  “No,” I say. “I didn’t.”

  “I do,” he says. “Two sisters, actually, but the younger one’s fifteen. She wants to be a biochemist.”

  “Yeah?” I try to imagine Rubio’s sister, a younger version of him, maybe a little more awkward, a little less cocksure. Future biochemist. I smile.

  “She’s my kid sister, you know?” He takes his eyes off the viewport and looks at me. “I’d do anything to protect her.”

  “Yeah.” I think I know what he means. “It’s funny Cass feels that way about Nethanel when he’s the older—”

  “No,” Rubio says. “I’m not talking about Nethanel.”

  I frown at him. Who is he talking about, then?

  “You have a sister, too, right?” Rubio says. “And a mom? Or is it a foster mother?”

  “Ava and Soraya.” I look at my palms, at the scars.

  “So you don’t think they want to protect you as much as Cassia wants to protect Nethanel?” Rubio looks almost angry, gripping the push bars and grinding his jaw. I’ve never seen him like this before.

  “Rubio—”

  “Don’t you think they need you to come back as much as Cassia and Milah need Nethanel?” Rubio’s face has gone red. “Don’t you think they care just as much?”

  “I . . .” I haven’t really thought about that. “I guess they do. But I don’t have a kid. I don’t have anyone depending on me like Nethanel does.”

  “You sure about that?” Rubio asks.

  I shrug. Ava and Soraya love me, but they don’t depend on me. The only things that have ever truly depended on me were the butterflies, and someone else could care for them as easily as I could. There’s nothing unique about me, nothing irreplaceable. So doesn’t my life have more worth if I’m using it to save other people?

  We fly in on in silence. The cryovolcano appears on the horizon, its peak disappearing in the swirl of snow and ice erupting from its top. Rubio keeps our altitude low, beneath the stratum of ice fanning out into the upper atmosphere, but even so, the air currents jostle us wildly. Cassia climbs out of the berth and straps herself into one of the passenger chairs at the back of the cockpit. We touch down beside the lone tower that marks Kazan Spindle, near blind from the haze of falling snow.

  Rubio stares out at the storm. “Well, at least we’ll die in an interesting way.”

  I think it’s more likely we’ll die under the surface than out in the cold, but I won’t say that aloud. The plan is that we’ll present ourselves as itinerant workers in search of a quick job that will give us money for ship repairs. We look the part, anyway. And if what we’ve heard is right and we’re lucky, we’ll find Nethanel down there.

  I turn from the viewport. “Are you both okay with this?”

  “Of course not,” Rubio says. “But I haven’t had a better idea.”

  “You could have stayed in Ny Kyoto with Tibbet,” Cassia mutters.

  “Nah.” Rubio throws an arm around her. “I’m the one with security experience, right? I can’t let you two wander off and get killed.”

  I lean over the controls and peer out the viewport. We’re well inside the landing pad, but we haven’t moved since we set down. “Shouldn’t they have read us by now? Why aren’t they bringing us down?”

  We exchange worried glances.

  “It’s a small station.” Cassia chews on her lip. “Maybe they don’t man it unless they’re expecting someone.”

  “Too bad our long-range coms are shot.” Rubio kicks at the wall. “We could send out a call and check.”

  Cassia scowls. “It’s not my fault they burned out. I’m not the one that installed a damper and then shoved in the directional.”

  Rubio sighs. “I’m not blaming you. All I’m saying is your man Sweetie saddled us with the worst ship imaginable.”

  “My man Sweetie—”

  A soft beep sounds from the instrument panel.

  “Hey, cut it out.” I point to the telemetry readout. “Listen.”

  Cassia and Rubio fall silent. A small beep sounds, and a light pulses on the screen.

  Rubio’s head snaps up to the viewport. “Something’s out there?”

  I squint outside. Nothing but white, nothing but blinding, driving snow, the base of the tower barely visible through it.

  The beep and pulse come through again, faster this time, closer.

  I lean over the controls and peer out the viewport.

  “What is it?” Cassia asks behind me.

  “Dunno,” Rubio answers. “It’s alive, but other than that, I can’t tell.”

  Pulse . . . beep. Closer.

  A small dark shape resolves against the white, walking toward us. I suck in a breath. “Look.” I nudge Rubio’s arm.

  The figure draws nearer. A person, out in the storm.

  “Someone from the spindle?” he says.

  “Must be,” I agree. “But why only one of them?”

  “We should suit up,” Rubio says. “Go out there and meet them.”

  “We can’t,” Cassia says.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s -261 degrees outside,” Cassia says. “You need a full suit out there and all of ours are full of rat holes.”

  “Cryonecrosis,” I mutter, staring at the tiny figure in the snowstorm.

  Cassia and Rubio turn to me in tandem and give me a strange look.

  I clear my throat. “Frostbite,” I explain. “Instant frostbite.” Apparently, my brain is still spotty on the first seven years of my life, but it’s plenty good at trivia.

  “Why can’t we use the deep suits?” Rubio says. “I mean, we don’t need them to hold pressure, only to keep out the cold, so the rat holes shouldn’t matter.”

  I shake my head. “You’d end up looking like that cheese—the one with the holes.”

  “Swiss?” Rubio says.

  “Can we please stop talking about cheese?” Cassia raises her voice.

  She points to the viewport, where the figure has stopped several dozen meters from our ship. It lifts an arm and gives an exaggerated wave.

  “They’re waiting for us,” she says.

  My body goes cold. The dakait are waiting for us. They’re all there, underneath our feet.

  “Someone has to go.” Cassia gives me a meaningful look.

  “What?”

  “Someone has to meet them.” She tilts her head and widens her eyes at me.

  “Vaat,” I curse. Because we do have one working deep suit. Mine.

  Chapter 24

  Out on the surface, everything is silent and gloom-blue. The wind skitters across the ground, sending eddies of snow snaking over the plain. I walk stiffly, layered in my pressure suit, then the body armor, then a long coat lined with synthesized fur that the Tsukinos gave us. I wipe the powder from my faceplate and struggle to the figure waiting among the drifts.

  My welcoming party wears a long, hooded coat like mine, mirrored goggles, and some sort of device that looks like a re-breather covering the lower half of its face. She—or he?—taps the side of her head, signaling to me to turn on my short-range coms.

  I switch them on and give a thumbs-up.

  A man’s voice fills my headset. “Your ship’s com receiver’s off-line.” He sounds scratchy, like a toad with a sore throat, but I’m not sure how much of that is his transmitter.

  “I know. We found a . . . I mean, it shorted.”

  He cocks his head to the side. “You lost?”

  “This is Kazan Spindle, right?” I say cautiously. “We’re looking for Cryatics Wholesale.”

  He nods. “One and the same. What do you want?”

  “My friends and I . . .” I wave back at the Mendicant. “We’re looking for work. Our ship’s in bad repair
.”

  “Sasuga.” He snorts and stares over the whipping snow at the spot where we landed. “How many?”

  “Three,” I say. “Just the three of us.”

  “We’ll have to see what our recruiter says.” He nods at the ship. “Tell them they should come out.”

  “They can’t,” I say. My coms whine with feedback, and I raise my voice over the noise. “We don’t have enough pressure suits. Like I said, we need some repairs—”

  “They’ll have to ride down in the ship, then,” he says.

  “No problem,” I say. “Let me just—”

  “Transit,” he interrupts. “Bring her under.”

  A hum builds under the ice, almost imperceptible at first, but rising until I feel it in my chest. A crack reverberates across the snow. A neat circle of ice around the Mendicant drops half a meter, taking the ship with it.

  “What are you doing?” I yelp. If these people are the ones who have Nethanel, the last thing we want is to be split up. “Shouldn’t I go with them?”

  “No need.” Our envoy sounds bored. “You can ride down the spindle with me. It’s much more comfortable.”

  “But—” I glance back at the Mendicant, slowly sinking on its plate of ice. Vaat.

  “You’ll see your shipmates on the other side.” The man trudges a few paces, then turns back for me. “Come on. It’s förkylning out here. You want to freeze to death?”

  I hesitate for a moment, staring into the storm. I don’t really have a choice. The Mendicant is gone. There’s nothing else but the spindle for thousands of kilometers around. It’s follow him or take my chances with hypothermia and oxygen deprivation, so I hurry after him through the snow.

  “You can take off your mask now,” says the man once we’re aboard the spindle’s creaking lift. He does the same, revealing a flushed round face and tousled red hair pulled up in the same topknot every dakait I’ve met has worn. His beard brushes his chest. “So hot, these things.” He still sounds like a frog.

  I unseal my helmet and tuck it under my arm. My hair is probably as wild as his. I try to comb it down with my fingers and then give up. Why should I care about impressing a bunch of jhaant ke pissu who buy and sell their fellow human beings?

  The redheaded man stares at me.

  “What?” I look down at my suit. Melting snow clings to my coat and boots, but his clothes are no different. Unease creeps in at the base of my stomach.

  “Nothing.” He grins. “It’s been awhile since we’ve seen a kurai tös around here, that’s all. The boys will eat you up with a spoon.”

  I don’t know what he’s called me, but the way he says it makes my skin crawl. Careful, Miyole. If we were anywhere but here, I’d come back at him with something smart. But we are here, and I’m alone, so I set my jaw and stay quiet.

  “That’s a right pretty suit for someone whose ship needs repairing.” The man raises an eyebrow at me.

  I glare back. “It belonged to the last person who asked me too many questions.” It’s a line I picked up watching talkies with Rushil, and it sounds significantly less tough coming out of my mouth than from an ancient screen cowboy.

  He laughs. “Okay, lillflicka. Fits you nice, though.”

  “Miyole,” I say.

  “Miyole,” he repeats with a smile. “You can call me Rött.”

  The smell of mildew grows as the lift carries us down. Through the carriage’s open frame, rusted metal sheets bolted onto the spindle’s nacre glide into view. Images from my History of Medicine course skip through my head—metal pins and plates holding together bone. A shiver travels down from my occipital lobe to the back of my neck. I concentrate on the clack and squeak of the lift, and the ever-deepening shaft growing above me.

  Rött leans against the side of the carriage. “What kind of work are you looking for?”

  “Whatever’s needed.” It’s what Cassia told us to say, what her parents always said when they wanted a job. “What is it you do here?”

  “You have any experience diving?” he asks.

  I think of the harrow. “A little.”

  “Maybe we can use you, then.” The lift jolts, and he rocks with it. “How long are you wanting to sign on?”

  I swallow, trying to force down the feeling that my stomach wants to climb up out of my throat. I look him in the eye. “As long as it takes.”

  He laughs. “Don’t you have someone waiting for you back wherever you’re from?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” I say.

  Rött frowns out of the side of the lift, looking at something I can’t see. “You’d be surprised.” He turns back to me, smile in place again. “Where’d you say you’re from?”

  I look up. I can’t see the top of the shaft anymore. “Does it matter?”

  He shrugs. “It’s all the same to me.”

  The lift slows to a stop with a shriek. The doors roll open exactly as the Mendicant rises, dripping, from an air lock built into the floor. I start toward it, but Rött pulls me back.

  “Not so fast, lillflicka.”

  “Let go.” I try to shrug out of his grip, but his fingers dig into my shoulder where the armor doesn’t cover it.

  “You’re hurting me.” Fear edges into my voice.

  Rött laughs. “Believe me, tös, when I’m hurting you, you’ll know.”

  I swallow. My palms are clammy inside my gloves. Do they suspect us? I’ve never seen Rött before, so how could they? Did my DSRI suit give us away? Rött walks me forward until we’re within sight of the Mendicant. The mirroring on the front viewport makes it impossible to see in, but I know Rubio and Cassia are watching from inside. Something clicks and whines behind me, and then rises and rests cold against my temple.

  Rött releases my shoulder. He raises his free hand to the Mendicant, makes a sharp, beckoning motion with it, and then presses the gun harder against my head. I close my eyes. Pressure is equal to force divided by area. Force equals mass times acceleration.

  The ship’s doors open, and Cassia and Rubio walk down the ramp, hands up. A group of men with slug guns across their shoulders file out from behind the Mendicant and surround them.

  “Don’t be shy, little children.” Rött smiles. “Come out, come out.”

  “What are you doing?” My voice shakes. “We just came looking for work.”

  “Did you now?” Rött circles around to face me. “Take off your coat.”

  “What?”

  “Take off your coat.” Rött gestures with the gun. His smile is gone.

  Vaat. I fumble with the zipper, pull one arm out, then the other. The coat falls in a pile at my feet, exposing the body armor I’m wearing over my pressure suit.

  “Where did you get this?” Rött taps the plating over my abdomen with his gun.

  “We bought it.” I shoot a look at Cassia and Rubio. “From a junker in Ny Kyoto.”

  “Interesting.” He raises his eyebrows. “Some tinkers who are only looking for a job spent enough for three sets of armor, and yet they say they don’t have the money to fix their ship.”

  I stay silent.

  “We lost a ship a few weeks back,” Rött says. “And three good crewmen, kitted out with armor a lot like what you have here. You wouldn’t happen to have seen them, would you?”

  I glare at him, gritting my teeth. I will not look at Cassia. I will not give anything else away.

  Rött signals to one of his crew. “Juna.”

  A woman with broad shoulders and her hair in the same topknot as the men steps forward.

  “Take these three down to confinement. We’ll see if they’re feeling more talkative after some time in the dark.”

  Juna pins my arms behind me in one swift movement.

  I struggle against her. “You’re making a mistake. We’re DSRI. They’ll come looking for us.”

  Rött laughs. “Who do you think our best buyer is?”

  “You’re lying,” I say. Maybe the DSRI would buy from Rangnvaldsson, but not here. Not from outrigh
t slavers.

  Rött shrugs. “One thing I know for sure, that’s no government ship you flew in on. I’m willing to bet a pretty penny no one knows you’re here.”

  My heart sinks. I said too much. Just the three of us. Our ship’s in bad repair. We don’t have enough pressure suits. He knows we’re trapped.

  “Now then,” Rött says. “Let’s discuss the terms of your employment.”

  An iron-plated door slams closed behind us. I blink into the darkness and start as Cassia’s cold hand grabs mine. Wherever we are, the air is thick with the stench of waste—feces, urine, and sweat. Rött and his men have taken my coat, the body armor, and my helmet, leaving me with only my pressure suit and boots. I squeeze back.

  A shuffling scrape sounds in front of us. A dim yellow glow radiates from several slots in the wall on the far side of the room, sketching the outline of figures moving. I back into the door. I can feel them more than hear them—the heat and stench of unwashed bodies, the stuffy, twice-breathed air.

  More shuffling. A cough. And then a voice from the darkness. “Bienvenidos al infierno, niños.”

  Rubio stiffens. “Quien habla?” He steps forward. “Show yourself.”

  “Ay, que es la voz de mi juventud.” Something rough and greasy brushes the back of my hand and the voice speaks at my elbow. “La hora viena. Ki ki ri ki! Ki ki ri ki!”

  “Papá.” A woman’s this time. “Stop with that rooster nonsense. Leave them alone.”

  “Déjenles.” His voice turns sad. “Déjenles solo. Solo. Solos. Solitos.”

  “Who’s there?” Rubio moves another step into the room. “Quienes son?”

  “We’re no one.” A different man’s voice. He coughs wetly. “And neither are you.”

  Cassia tugs at the sleeve of my deep suit. “We need a light.”

  “I don’t—” Cassia tugs at my sleeve again, and I remember. My suit has tracking lights so I can be found if my tether should snap in space.

  “Shield your eyes,” I call out into the dark.

  “Cobren sus ojos,” Rubio repeats.

  Two stark blue-white rods light up at my wrists, illuminating a mob of thirty or so people in a room far too small for them. They flinch away from the light, a gnarl of dirty limbs and matted hair. An old man steps into the circle of light, and I swallow a scream. Where his nose should be, there are only two holes, like a skull.