by K. Gorman
At first, she didn’t see them. The polished metal on their sides reflected the dimly-lit, monochromatic grayscape of the area—but their movement gave them away. Two spheres floated across the open lot toward them, their speed slow but inexorable.
Marc patted Jaxx’s shoulder. “You—go. Get out of here. Find a vehicle to get away in. Across or under water if you can. That might throw off the scent.”
Jaxx wasted no time in jogging away.
“Don’t worry, my buddy’s got a boat.” He turned, half-waving. “Take care—and thank you again.”
“Good.” Marc turned back to her. “Now let’s get you inside.”
“Yes, let’s,” she said. “I can feel your stimulants wearing off.”
He studied her for a few moments. The light scattered across his face in a demarcation of shadow and light, blue and orange tint. He glanced back at the approaching spheres. “Want some help?”
She considered him for a moment. She hadn't lied about the stimulants wearing off. Already, she could feel herself wearing. A pressure, similar to the mental strain of using her light dummies, mounted in the back of her head, and a dry, stretched feeling crossed over her frontal lobe. The pinpricks of a headache were beginning on one side of her forehead.
Wincing, she gave a stiff nod. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
He met her eyes for a few seconds, then pocketed the netlink. Switching to her other side, he put himself between her and the spheres and slid a supporting arm under her shoulder, hooking his hand around her ribs.
Together, they walked to the ship.
They were up the ramp and inside before the spheres even reached the shelter.
*
“Let’s fry them,” Cookie said. “You got that gun, right?”
Karin shot him an irritated look as she limped onto the bridge. “Get out of my seat.”
He threw his hands up. “Hey, now. Don’t I have seniority in this company?”
“Yeah, but we like her more.” Soo-jin gave Karin and Marc a relieved, approving look to as they came in. “And besides, you’re just a contractor. Out.”
Karin slumped in the familiar pilot chair, grateful to relax, guiding Ethan out of the way and re-adjusting it to her specifications as she lowered it closer to the screens—Cookie, taking at least a little of the familial height range he shared with Marc, had made it higher than her short stature preferred—then brought up the navigation screen she’d left on standby. Her interface rippled back into its proper place in front of her, the government-approved route making a jagged line across the bottom in its flattened, simplified star map. A timer in the corner counted down to their launch schedule.
One minute.
As she flicked through and engaged the engine, light flashed from the outside of the ship. An alert popped up in the corner of her screen.
The spheres.
“You want me to do anything about that?” Soo-jin asked from the sensor desk. She already had a video feed of the outside playing across her screen, probably from the door access panel.
“No.” Karin gave them a brief squint before returning to her boot-up sequence. “They’re about to be shit out of luck.”
“What if they have trackers?” Cookie asked. “Won’t they tell people where we are?”
“Well, they seemed kind of stupid back in the complex. Attacking everything that moved.” Marc leaned over and squinted toward Soo-jin’s screen. “Besides, it’d look more suspicious if they suddenly disappeared.”
Another alert flashed in the corner. Karin ignored it, instead switching through the landing gear and engines screens, double-checking they were on schedule. The time clicked down to single digits. On cue, they felt the sudden reverberation throughout the ship as the engines fired up.
If anyone was looking for heat-signatures, they’d just farted the sun. She glanced through the screen. Hopefully, Cookie’s dummy-engine setup worked.
“Everyone, strap in,” she said. A glance to the side caught Ethan pulling the belt over his chest in the secondary crash seat on the wall. She caught Marc as he made to take the other one. “Actually, could you be in co-pilot? In case we need to use the gun?”
“If it comes to that, we’re all hooped.” He gripped the back of the seat as the ship lurched up.
“For comfort, then.”
He held her gaze for a second. Then he slipped into the seat beside her.
She overrode the auto-pilot and took the controls while the landing gear snapped up into the bottom. The ship rocked as she rebalanced it. A small piece of her stomach flipped as the view outside the front windows shifted, and she smiled.
I am never leaving this nav seat again.
“You’re flying? Really? Aren’t you tranqed?” Cookie raised his eyebrows.
“Better me than a computer. Shut up and sit down.”
“Sol.” He made for the crash seat next to Ethan, still muttering.
She ignored him. Another alert flashed on her screen, but the spheres in the video feed were growing more and more distant. Her smile grew into a grin as the sky opened up above her. Deep blue, with a few stars twinkling out from behind the trailing clouds and light pollution. The pressure in her chest lightened as they flew up into it.
As she'd said, those spheres were shit out of luck. Just like anyone else who’d decided to chase them.
Well, almost. Her blood jumped in her veins as Soo-jin spoke.
“Alliance incoming. Three ships, hard burn.”
They flashed into the corner of her screen, their idents attaching as the network pinged them. Three fighters, low-level scramble formation, streaked through the sky. A second later, they became visible outside the front windows, their engines leaving three yellow-blue ion trails.
“They’re going for Cookie’s dummy.” Karin kept her controls steady, tracking their flight. “Too fast a flight trajectory for us.”
“They could change, though,” Marc said.
“Let’s hope they don’t.”
They rode up above the skyline. The city stretched below them, Hegir-Nuna district on its island, each bridge and Skytrain track lit up like lines of shining golden dots. It looked like a toy town as they ascended, with the shadowy blues of the Akurgal Mountains and their hanging clouds adding soft hues and silhouettes. One moon—Ariel, by the looks of its size—hung in a crescent above the ocean, and they met the other as they rose up, an orange-tinted gibbous above them.
Minutes ticked by. No other notifications came on her screen. As she raced over the continent, the evergreen forests and lakes changing to deciduous, then to plains, then to deserts, the bridge was absolutely silent. Even Cookie didn’t speak.
At least, not until they broke atmo.
Even with the stabilizers, the controls rattled in her hands. She blinked past the creeping lethargy in her body—those stimulants really were wearing off—and kept her grip, aware of Ethan’s wide-eyed stare on the side of her head. Flares of orange flicked from their shields as the exit velocity burned off whatever flack they’d dragged up with them—insects, tiny leaves on the wind, maybe some water vapor.
As the curve of the planet came into view, glowing a subtle blue from the sun that appeared on their left, the blockade came into sight.
“Holy child,” Cookie said.
“Thought we were lying?” Soo-jin asked. Then she leaned forward. “Sol. Alliance on the screen.”
The cruiser appeared on their right, about midway-up the curve of the blockade’s orbit. As Soo-jin got a bead on it, the info popped up on Karin’s screen.
EN-01, the Lamassu. Enlil's flagship and the same ship they’d met on the way in.
The comm link flashed up on her screen, the ship’s memory having already tagged it in the system.
Cookie’s eyes widened. “Oh, shit. What should we do? Do we use that gun?”
Marc shot him a scathing look. “On an Alliance cruiser? Are you an idiot?”
“They’d kill us in less than a minute,” Soo-jin sai
d. “And that’s even figuring in them having to navigate around all these other bullshit ships.”
A comms message flashed up, and her eyes narrowed on her screen. “It’s the same message about quarantine they sent last time.”
“Automated, then.” Marc relaxed in his seat.
“So… what do we do?” Cookie said. “Nothing?”
“Yep. Fly and wait. See if we catch their attention. They’ve got one cruiser running an entire blockade. I doubt they’re tracking much ground to air transport below atmo. Still, hope your dummy and ident tag switch is enough to keep them off us.”
“Sol. Seriously?” He sat back in his chair. Sweat made a sheen on his forehead as he watched the screen. “This is going to kill me.”
“Cross your fingers, then,” Soo-jin called over. “Maybe it will help.”
Karin adjusted course to avoid some of the orbiting crafts. They passed ships of all makes and kinds, sizes, and shapes. A cross-section of different decades, cultures, and budgets. Anything remotely spaceworthy floated up here. Everyone had come back to Enlil to check on their loved ones—or to find news. To be less alone in their fight against the Shadows.
At last, she slipped between the last two ships. Albus, Enlil's smaller moon, hung above her, bright in the front windows. She aimed for its bottom, meaning to dip into its gravity well and add a boost to her engines.
They all held their breath as the Alliance cruiser, and the planet, grew more and more distant.
For once, their luck held. No one came after them.
Chapter 8
The ruins stood at the top of a hill, old and tall, and their weathered granite faces had long, dark stains that made them easy to pick out against the tan grass that covered the field. The air smelled sweet, hot. It had rained earlier in the day, but the sun had since beat the water from the ground. Only a mugginess remained, pressing against Karin’s skin whenever the wind relented. A stiff breeze blew over the field, making the grasses around her hush and bend. In the distance, butterflies fluttered above the tops of the grass. Honeybees droned from flower to flower.
Her feet itched. The stream she’d splashed through had left mud in the cracks of her sandals, and a red area had spread up in the split between her toes from where they’d rubbed, but she didn’t want to go back to the compound to change them. If she did, they’d know she’d been over the fence.
They didn’t seem to care about that much anymore, but she still didn’t want to return. She was supposed to be in treatment now.
But the ruins had been too much to resist, and the treatment made her feel sick. She’d discovered them yesterday. If she cut through the labs and ran, they were just ten minutes away.
The wind rose around her again, this time strong enough to pull at her hat. She jammed it back on her head, waited for the gust to die back down, and straightened her spine. Then she shucked her sandals, grabbed them by the straps, and began picking her way up the thin trail that led to the top the hill.
But, before she’d gone far, a shout drew her attention from near the base of the hill.
She crinkled her nose and squinted. Who had found her this time? Dr. Sasha? Ling? Impossible to tell from so far away. The wood crept into the edge of the field, and the person was still on the other side. She caught a flash of bright color from between the trees, along with a head of long black hair.
Dr. Sasha, then.
She relaxed. Out of all the doctors at the compound, Evangeline Sasha was one of the nicest. Her sister Nomiki didn’t think so, but then Nomiki didn’t like any of them, anyway. Even before their treatments had started, she’d always been the one to run off. She’d run off this morning, too. Karin suspected she'd taken to the woods. Easier to hide. Maybe even close.
But if she was, she didn’t show herself.
Dr. Sasha reached her a few minutes later, breathless. “Lord, but you do go far, don’t you?”
Karin frowned. “It’s not that far. I was going to come back.”
Dr. Sasha smiled. Smiles came easy to her and, for some reason, they always came across as honest. A tall woman with a thick frame, the long slope of her cheeks seemed similar to Nomiki's, except the doctor's wider eyes and more prominent cheekbones threw that similarity off. The corner of her eyes crinkled as she bent down to Karin's level, giving the slope toward the compound a backward's glance. “Would it kill you to go downhill next time?”
She specialized in bio-psychiatric engineering, Karin remembered. When she’d been younger, Dr. Sasha had given her all sorts of tests—for cognitive function, she later found out. Dr. Sasha was one of several in charge of making sure Karin, Nomiki, and all the others grew up healthy and normal.
She leaned uphill, resisting the urge to look toward the ruins. They may seem obvious to her, but few people had mentioned them, and she didn’t want to give them away.
They were her secret.
Well, hers and Nomiki’s, anyway.
Dr. Sasha tutted when she caught sight of Karin’s bare feet. “Is there something wrong with your shoes?”
She held them up. “They’re damp.”
“You’ll get stung by a bee if you go barefoot. Maybe even a snake.”
“Only whip snakes here,” she said. “They don’t bite.”
“Yes, yes—but you get my point.” Dr. Sasha sighed, then straightened, stretching her back as she stood. After a few seconds, she looked back down at Karin again. “You’re playing hooky from your treatment.”
“I don’t like it.”
“None of us do, but we still have to get it. You know, I was one of you once. Back in the day. I was one of the first in this program. If you don’t take your treatments, you’ll go back to the way you were.”
Karin squinted down at her feet and said nothing. A second later, she heard the sound of a zipper being pulled. Dr. Sasha brought out a small case with the Seirlin logo on it—a snake looped around an egg. “Look, we can do it here, if you like. In the sunshine. Is that what you want? We don’t have to go back.”
“It makes me feel sick.”
Dr. Sasha took her hand. “I know honey, but in a few years, you’ll feel all better. That’s how it works.”
There was a small amount of silence, then. Dr. Sasha’s shadow came over her as she leaned in, and her thumb rubbed a spot on the outside of Karin’s bicep. They alternated locations every week, but they still bruised.
Holding her breath, she waited for the quick bite of the needle.
It never came. Instead, something jolted like static through her mind. She jerked.
When she looked up, Dr. Sasha had vanished.
The field was back to how it had been a few minutes ago, bright and warm, hazy. Her sandals hung from her fingers, swaying. She blinked, frowning at the hillside as she turned her gaze in the direction of the compound again.
The doctor was nowhere to be seen.
*
She awoke in a rush, shaking as the remnants of the dream flashed through her.
Earth. The ruins. The compound. Injections and tests. Stale, green-lit hospital rooms with no one around. Other kids like her.
Marc, sitting in a folding chair by the door, straightened in alarm. “Karin? Is something wrong?”
But her mind had already figured it out. Dr. Evangeline Sasha.
She remembered.
She scrambled out of bed, all flailing arms and fingers. Her feet hit the cold metal floor. Within seconds, she’d grabbed the notebook from the crate on the opposite side of the room and flipped to the sticky note on the front page.
Dr. Evangeline Sasha. The first on Nomiki’s list.
Karin remembered her now. Tall, dark-haired, she’d been one of the main doctors who had treated her at the compound. She’d always had a kind way about her, as if she truly believed the place was helping them all. She’d been one of the compound’s test subjects too, once, before Karin and Nomiki had been born.
Her fingers trembled where they touched the picture beneath the note. D
r. Sasha was visible just at the edge of the frame, bent over a table full of young children as if to examine their coloring pages.
“Karin?” Marc said again. “Are you okay?”
She’d forgotten he was there. He half-rose in his seat, one hand holding the blaster that he’d been keeping on the edge of the bed next to his chair, the frown on his face a mixture of concern, confusion, and anxiety.
She shook her head and gave him an apologetic smile. “Sorry—I just—I remembered something I’d forgotten.”
“Oh.”
His tone was polite, professional, and she could have left it at that—she certainly had left it at that before, when they’d just been employer and employee.
But they’d progressed to something else now.
He mattered.
She clutched the notebook and glanced from him to the storage crate, the bed, and back. It wasn’t that she had forgotten about it. It just hadn’t been a huge priority. But now, in orbit, they had nothing but time. She sank back down on the bed and patted the covers next to her. “Here, have a look.”
His voice rumbled as he stood. “Is it those ruins you promised to show me?”
“Er.” She paused, smoothing the covers, and a pang of guilt ran through her. “Some of them are. We can look at them, too.”
The second he sat down, she regretted the invitation.
It’d been a long time since she’d had anyone other than Ethan sit next to her, and even then, the pool had been limited to those few roommates she’d had, classmates, and Nomiki—and it had never happened on someplace as personal as her own bed.
The mattress sank down as he sat, pulling her with it, and a jolt went through her as they bumped shoulders. The light from the door outlined his features, the shadow carving slanting dips across his cheek and nose. His military tattoo was just visible on his bicep. The ship's artificial lighting didn't pick up the tone of his skin as much as the sunlight back on Enlil had, but this close, it was easy to see its muted richness.
Heat flushed her collarbones as she realized she was staring. She dropped her gaze back down to the book.
“So, I was raised in a scientific compound on Earth. Nomiki and I were test-tube castoffs. No parents—well, technically, there are genetic parents somewhere, but... have you heard of the selective birth scandal?”
