Dove Arising

by Karen Bao

  24

  “GO!” YINHA YELLS.

  From my vantage point, I see my team hunker down behind boulders while sinister shapes stalk toward our territory. Now that my eyes have adjusted to the dark, I can make out the fuzzy outlines of human forms. Their helmets bob up and down with each step; they’re not used to moon-grav.

  Orion, Pan, and a girl named Libra, on recon, cross the dividing line of lights and send me real-time updates on the other side. Yellow shoots down Libra. Once the programming in her helmet jerks her to the ground, a pair of painful-looking pincers removes her from the regolith and carries her toward the Titan.

  “I can’t see Wes, little piece of grit,” Orion fumes. “And we have no idea where their green box is. He hid it good.”

  I hear frantic whispers from my teammates on defense. Wes’s team is making headway.

  “It’s the yellow team,” Nash says from below. “They’re running to our side and jumping up on the boulders. Then they shoot. I think Wezn read your mind and knew you’d tell us to hide. We’re getting killed here.”

  He knows me too well; I should have anticipated this. I issue new orders: “Team, get to higher ground before they reach the hill.” I gesture frantically with both arms, hoping to draw the Yellow Team’s attention away from a crucial boulder far to the left, the one hiding our box. “You’ll have more of a vantage point if you come up here.”

  Several blue lights dance toward the hill. Yellow ones follow, too close. I get out my simulation Lazy, peep out from behind the boulder shielding me, and shoot at the enemy lights. It’s tough, as they’re continuously bouncing in different directions. Wes probably told his troops never to move in straight lines. I cheer inside when one of my shots turns a yellow light red.

  “Callisto’s down!” cheers a group of Blue girls.

  I let myself laugh. Better that the regolith slaps her than I do.

  Though Nash motions me to duck, I stay standing and continue trying to pick off the Yellow Team. I don’t score any more hits, but two other lights turn red thanks to the shooting of my teammates.

  I remember Arcturus’s advice to keep talking. “Good work, defense. Orion, how’s the other side?”

  Orion turns on his microphone, panting. “You won’t believe it. We made it to the top of their hill, where they had the box, and as soon as they saw us, they started chucking it to each other. Someone throws it; someone else catches it—Pan, duck!—and they take cover. We can’t keep this up forever. I’ve lost two people already.”

  “Nukes on a stick,” Nash swears. “Hang in there, O.”

  I try not to overreact. “Any ideas?”

  “Half of us stay here,” says Orion. “The rest go stomp on them.”

  “Yeah,” Pan agrees. “A surge would be nice.”

  My legs tense, itching for action. “Orion and Pan, keep an eye on that box. I’m coming with reinforcements. Nash—stay here.” She protests, but I shush her with a finger. I name ten other people, and tell them to wait near the dividing line while I make my way over through enemy fire and fake boulders.

  “When I say go, we run straight down the sides of the area. There are too many Yellow soldiers in the middle. Ready? Now!”

  The eleven of us rise from behind boulders and sprint. We’re fresh, whereas Wes’s people move languidly. He’s exhausted them, forgetting that not everyone can lope for kilometers on end like he can.

  Orion’s voice crackles in my headset again. “Hey, Stripes, I shot Ganymede pretty good. His face landed right on the ground, where it belongs.”

  A number of us snicker into our collective sound system.

  By now, the entire Yellow Team has noticed the intruders. Their jerky movements indicate that they’re waiting for a certain smooth voice in their headsets to order them around.

  In my peripheral vision, I see one such confused trainee and shoot at her head. A red light appears, and I let myself whoop—alien as it feels to my vocal cords—along with the nearby members of my team. My first one-shot knockout. An invisible force, probably magnetic, knocks her to the sand.

  According to my headset, it’s Eri. I immediately regret my outburst.

  I take cover behind a nearby boulder and catch my breath. My teammates have tracked down the throwers and are shooting at them. All is well.

  Suddenly, arms embrace me from behind—one around my shoulders, one around my belly. Why didn’t I check the area before I moved in? As Arcturus watches the footage, he’s probably shaking his round bald head.

  Is it Jupiter? He’s the only one who could get such a steely hold on me, even in a pressure suit. Or is it him?

  My assailant presses the tip of a Lazy to my helmet, over one of the blue lights. His helmet touches mine. Through the air and polycarbonate between us, I hear his voice.

  “Hello.” It’s Wes. His voice is woolly and quiet, though I know he’s yelling so I can hear.

  Callisto was right—he’s the sort to fix my back one day and put a simulation-blaster to my helmet the next. I want to hit myself for thinking any better of him.

  With this victory, he’ll be the top trainee. My ranking might drop all the way to tenth, or worse. Why betray me? And if he can’t help it, why now? I’m so close to freeing Mom.

  “How did you find me?” I can’t help but ask.

  “You always like to be able to see everything.”

  My heart pounds so hard I feel it in my temples, and not entirely because of rankings and points. The fear of what Wes will do next makes me want to shriek.

  He continues, “I heartily apologize in advance for— Oof!”

  The lights on his helmet turn from yellow to red, and he belly flops onto the regolith.

  Sprinting away from us is a figure topped by a yellow-lit helmet, so mammoth in its pressure suit that it could only be Jupiter. If he’s in luck, the instructors will pretend they never saw the friendly fire in order to keep the General happy.

  Wes squirms for what seems an eternity before the pincers seize him and lift him out of sight.

  25

  THOUGH I’M PETRIFIED WITH SHOCK, I OPEN up the link and relay, “Wes is down. Hit by Jupiter.”

  Confused burbling streams into my ears. Orion sums it up best: “This may be the biggest favor that sucker’s ever done you, but I still want to sock him for it. I think he mutinied to take command of Yellow.”

  “Hey, team, don’t shoot Stripes,” Nash warns. “She’s nicer than Wes.”

  A few people laugh uneasily.

  “Focus,” I cut in. “Jupiter might know where our box is—that’s why he’s moving so quickly.” As I speak, a micrometeorite, the first in an oncoming grit-storm, bounces off my pressure suit.

  Half a dozen Yellow Team members race toward our side. Taking advantage of his immunity to rules, Jupiter likely used the zoom function on his visor before the match began, saw Blue digging a hole, and remembered which boulder we pushed on top of it. He waited until now to reveal his knowledge. With Wes gone, he can claim glory—and points—for himself.

  “Everyone on the enemy side,” I call. “We need to get their box. Now.”

  Three Yellow Team joggers still play catch with the box. They’re okay, moderately fast. But they’re distracted by the laser fire of Pan and other good shots. And I’m faster.

  One of them falls, and I hear Nash’s low chortle.

  “Nash! I told you to stay back.”

  “I’m more useful over here! Say you’re okay with it so I don’t lose points for insubordination.”

  “Fine . . .”

  I turn my attention back to the two remaining Yellow guards. They’re far from each other, tossing the box to and fro over boulders. If the one on my left continues in a straight line, I’ll be in a perfect position to catch it right before it gets to him.

  “Go,” I tell myself, pushing up off the regolith and scurrying alongside the Yellow boy, too close for him to shoot.

  His eyes grow shiny with surprise as the box hurtles toward u
s. It’s set to go right over my head and into his hands. I elbow him in the ribs and stretch both arms to my left.

  The wooden crate lands in my hands. The thing is heavier than I expected, even with moon-grav; no wonder the Yellow Team seemed weary. But I can’t be like them. Putting on an extra burst of speed, I scamper in a zigzag pattern, hoping to avoid the shots I imagine are aimed at my head.

  The dividing line glows a hundred meters away. The boulders are sparser here—and that’s when I see the enemy. Several silhouettes, one of them noticeably bigger than the others, are positioned every few meters along the line, barring my way.

  “I’ve got it, team. I’m coming!” I raise my voice to an unprecedented loudness. “Obstruction at the dividing line.”

  The shots behind me grow closer and more frequent. I dig my boots hard into the regolith, trying to lengthen my strides, but I only bounce higher, making me an easy target.

  Jupiter and comrades have noticed my flight and are firing at me too. Meanwhile, my teammates assault my ears with bad news.

  “They’ve taken down more of us!”

  “They’re digging! With their hands!”

  This is a comprehensive disaster: if I get shot down, Blue probably won’t be able to retake the box.

  What would Wes do? He wouldn’t have gotten into this situation in the first place, surrounded in the open on enemy terrain, but if he somehow did, he would observe, think, and get out. I scan my destination again. Two of my teammates canter toward the dividing line. Someone shoots down Jupiter, and whoops when he falls face-first. Behind him, surveying the chaos around her, is Io. She’s so close.

  “Io! Hold your arms out!” I give simple directions in the hope that she might actually follow them.

  So much for all the physics I’ve learned. I don’t have the time to run calculations in my mind before applying a diagonal push to the back of the box, which sails in a parabola over the line. One of Jupiter’s troops leaps up to catch it, but he overestimates the force needed to match its height and hovers in space as the box passes under the bottoms of his boots.

  That’s all I see before the suit locks up around me, and I fall into the regolith’s embrace.

  26

  WHITE. BLAST, IT STINGS. AS MY PUPILS shrink to accommodate the lighting inside the Titan, I become aware of cheers erupting on the right side of the cabin.

  Sitting on the shoulders of the rest of my team, Io cradles the green box in her arms as if it were a newborn.

  Blue won.

  “Amazing job, Stripes,” says a smooth voice, distorted because of the helmet I’m still wearing. I behold the person I want to both hug and strangle, kneeling beside my prone body and offering a hand to help me up.

  I bare my teeth.

  “Shh.” Wes grabs one of my limp, gloved hands, and with a minimum of contributions from me, arranges my body into a sitting position. He gently removes my helmet.

  Without receiving any instructions from my conscious mind, my arms pull him to me in a hug. He doesn’t respond—have I done something wrong? But soon I feel the warmth of his hands on my back and relax into them.

  “There you are. Number one.” His breath moves the hair on the right side of my head.

  Number one, unbelievable as it is. I jerk my arms, letting out a little yelp. How could mere flesh contain so much happiness?

  Even with my dumb luck, I probably accumulated an astronomical number of points from my stunts—and I’m proud of every one of those antics.

  Mom can leave her prison cell. When I become a sergeant, I’ll have enough bribe money from my first month’s salary to preserve her freedom, no matter what happens at her trial. My heart swells with the love that has sustained me these past weeks—and with liberation, however fleeting, from duty. Now I can rest, having played my role in bringing normality back to Theta 808 and survived.

  But Wes needed to place first too. “Sorry for taking your spot,” I say.

  His shoulders move under my embrace. “Watching you out there was almost as good as winning.”

  I squeeze him one last time before pulling my arms back where they belong. Already, members of my team have shifted their attention from Io to us. I scramble to my feet like a sprout growing off kilter and steel myself for the hugs and handshakes to come.

  Three hours later, in the dome, trainees pile on top of each other to get a glimpse of the final rankings. When I see them, I bounce on the balls of my feet and wring my hands, unable to contain my joy.

  1. PHAET THETA precedes 2. WEZN KAPPA. I’m relieved, because he could have slipped further down. Third is Callisto—what else was I expecting? If she placed any lower, her mother would fire Yinha and the other instructors. Fourth is Orion, who deserves every point he got. Fifth is Nash, who must have scored high based on her performance as my second-in-command. Jupiter comes in at sixth. His bulbous forehead appears even bigger now that he won’t stop seething.

  Ganymede, who doesn’t have powerful parents, places somewhere in the thirties with the likes of Eri. With a laugh, I realize that Io’s lucky catch moved her up to twenty-eighth. My heart warms at the sight of her dreamy smile. I never thought I could grow to like such a funny-minded person.

  Yinha’s amplified voice ends both the celebration and the fuming. “Everyone sit on the viewing platform in order of ranking. Cool?” She’s standing on a smaller floating platform with several other officers, including Arcturus Theta and a giant man with a protruding forehead who wears the general insignia, a clockwise swirl representing a mighty spiral galaxy. He could only be Jupiter’s father.

  I take the seat on the lower left with the number 1; the chair feels too wide, as if my little frame and little personality don’t fit my new role.

  When Wes sits to my right, it registers: I beat him. It’s not as satisfying as I imagined, because his efforts got me here. But he’s wearing a joyful expression, not the dimmed smile I’ve come to expect, so I erase the doubt and color my perception with gratitude.

  A projected image of the lunar flag appears on the far wall. It’s a square, with a black top half and a white bottom half. Three white stars form an arc in the black section, just as three black stars form an arc in the white; together, they make a hexagon that represents the six bases. Since three bases are usually in sunlight and three in darkness, it’s a fitting symbolic image. Mom always said the flag reminded her of an old Earthbound design; I forget the name, remembering only that it’s two syllables that start with a y sound.

  As the lights dim, Yinha invites us to stand and sing the national anthem.

  “Luna, Luna,

  Once a sphere on high,

  Now our home in the sky.

  Survive and prosper

  Take the bounty nature offers.

  Oh, the Earthbound below

  The truth they’ll never know.

  Silver mountains, blackest seas—

  Only here is mankind free.”

  Lights illuminate the dome once more, and the trainees—rather, soldiers—cheer. Chills climb up my spine, as if someone’s icy fingers were tickling the vertebrae one at a time. It’s the first time I’ve sung the words and thought about their meaning, into what I will now fight to defend. We’re “free,” but from what? Not material want, heaps of which I witnessed in Shelter, or direct commands, which govern my life here.

  Jupiter’s father rises and speaks in a magnified voice, his tone deep like Umbriel’s but crystalline with cunning. The General’s son may be rash, but the father is as composed as a sheet of graphite.

  “Congratulations on completing training and joining the Base IV Militia. Many of you may celebrate these next two years as an opportunity to serve the Moon. A number of you dread them. But I tell you this: we live in the greatest civilization ever created by man. It is a privilege to defend it!”

  Forty-seven trainees—all of us except me and Wes—hoot their approval.

  “Every one of you,” he says, “should swell with honor as you ride your ho
ver-seat to the platform and allow me to attach the private insignia to your jacket. I did the same when I was young. I never left. I continue to serve the honorable Standing Committee. My fervor led me to become general of the Base IV Militia.”

  “Here we behold an excessively humble man,” Wes observes out of the side of his mouth.

  Yinha calls names, starting with trainee number forty-nine, Europa Nu. Upon arriving at the platform, she tumbles out of her chair in her eagerness to shake the General’s hand and receive her adhesive insignia, a white circle of cloth with a simplified representation of an atom, complete with a nucleus and electron cloud, stitched upon it.

  Somewhere in the teens, the insignia changes to the special private symbol, a bigger white circle with a benzene ring. As one ascends the Militia hierarchy, the symbols grow larger in scale, from the atom of a private to the spiral galaxy of a general. Objects, such as the sergeant’s microchip, represent things the Militia considers indispensable. Jupiter, number six, receives a violent pat on the back from his father and a yellow square labeled CORPORAL. Upon the patch is an animal cell—a compartmentalized blob with short cilia on its surface. As Jupiter trudges away, the General glares at his back, his eyes blaming his son for not being good enough. Beside me, Wes chuckles.

  Nash, Orion, and Callisto solemnly receive their patches. The first two, to my surprise, don’t grin or laugh; I thought they would find something funny in seeing a huge, middle-aged man frowning at the people who bested his son.

  “Wezn Kappa.” As Wes rides to the platform, the General continues, “Typically, second-place trainees don’t rank higher than corporal. But this cohort is unusually talented. Upon careful consideration, we have decided to award Wezn the title of sergeant.”

  He produces a red diamond with a gold computer chip stitched upon it and presses it to Wes’s jacket. As Wes rides back, I notice his name stitched in small letters below the word, SERGEANT.

  If he’s a sergeant . . .

  “Our last trainee has displayed unusual physical and mental discipline, as well as leadership and bravery, in spite of being only fifteen years old. What you will hear next is unprecedented,” the General says in a monotone. Despite the obvious praise, he doesn’t seem to like me.