by Mike Sheriff
Hyro’s lips stretched into a smirk. She raised her hand as if trying to hide it. “My deputy’s already done that.”
“You’ve already been in contact with the dissenters?”
“I knew you were committed to this path when you came to see me before the May S.A.T.,” Hyro said, voice lowered. “I could see it in your eyes. I tasked my deputy to start reaching out to the dissenters immediately after you left.”
Cang weighed the statement. Perhaps her ability to stay in the shadows wasn’t as good as she’d thought.
Hyro nodded at the group of commanders marching up the hallway. “You’re going to need help keeping them in line. I sense a lack of nerve in some of them.”
She was right. With Pyros gone, it would be beneficial to have another strong voice in Zhongguo Cheng. One that carried a disproportionate amount of weight. Cang offered her hand. “I’d be honored to have your help.”
“You shall have it.”
They shook; one palm up, one palm down.
LAOSHI STUDIED THE bank of monitors on the aerostat’s navigation console. They provided a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the sky via cameras mounted on the gas envelope.
No contacts besides cumulonimbus clouds were visible—a good portent.
He switched off the cameras, limiting the visual sweeps to ten seconds every twenty minutes. The other electro-optical-signal sources on the aerostat, however benign, were deactivated to minimize the chances of detection. He set the autopilot to maintain a southeasterly course at an altitude of two thousand feet. A fierce tailwind made for choppy progress, but excellent ground speed—another good portent.
They could use all the good portents Sha could send them.
Their chosen path had one route to survival; finding the seed vault. If they failed in the task, they were doomed. An empty-handed return to Daqin Guojin would guarantee their culling. Exiled beyond its borders, they’d starve within a few weeks or be taken prisoner by a foraging mongrel patrol. The latter would be worse than starvation, especially for the women.
Laoshi shuddered. It couldn’t happen. It wouldn’t happen. Cordelia would no doubt take her own life; she knew too well what the mongrels were capable of. He’d take his granddaughter’s life with his own hand before letting her succumb to their deprivations.
Heqet remained rooted to the gondola’s windows beside Cordelia. She’d been there for the past hour, her incessant chatterwailing dotted with superlatives regarding the view below.
He strolled forward to join them. A hatch in the gondola’s starboard deckhead creaked open to his right. Daoren descended a ladder, face and pienfu coated with silica dust.
“How does the gas envelope look?” Laoshi asked.
“The hydrogen cells are filthy, but leak-free,” Daoren said, shaking dust from his tunic. “The Jireni mustn’t have taken any aimed shots at us. How are things in here?”
“No sign of pursuing aeroshrikes and the autopilot is set. With this tailwind, we should make the Egyptian coast in twelve hours.”
Laoshi halted beside Heqet at the forward windows.
Two thousand feet below, glinting threads etched a sea of sand. They snaked toward colossal domes studded with glass chimneys standing half as high as the aerostat. The chimneys spewed enormous white plumes that climbed another thousand feet before streaming to the southeast.
“A magnificent sight, isn’t it?”
“What are those structures?” Heqet asked.
“They’re glass mills.” Laoshi ran a finger across the window, tracing the glinting threads. “Those are huvvatrains, loaded with silica.” He pointed at the billowing white plumes. “And that’s oxygen, off-gassing from glass production. A byproduct vital for our survival in a world without vegetation.”
Heqet’s brow crimped. “What did vegetation look like?”
Laoshi mulled the question—how to describe a life form she’d never laid eyes upon? “It manifested in so many forms, child, but all were green and lush.”
“Lush,” Daoren said, settling at the window beside his mother. “That’s a good word.”
“An ancient word, and one that’s fallen into disuse.”
“How long did it take to die off?” Heqet asked. “The vegetation, I mean.”
“An excellent question,” Laoshi said, “but there’s no definitive answer. One thing’s certain though. The Cycle of Extinctions taught our ancestors a hard lesson about the fragility of interdependence. Every living thing played a part in a balance so delicate that removing the smallest organism impacted the larger collective—often in ways that couldn’t be foreseen. It’s a lesson we must relearn if we’re to survive as a species.” He put his arm around Heqet and pulled her closer. “In this world, every life is precious.”
Heqet rested her head on his shoulder. It conducted her inaudible sigh.
Laoshi could only guess at the thoughts behind the sigh. Perhaps she was lamenting the abundance of life forms that had disappeared from the planet. Perhaps she was imagining the possibility of reviving a select group of them. Or perhaps she was simply enjoying the view.
Miles ahead, the sea of sand terminated at the Sea of Storms. Many miles farther, a shimmering white ribbon stretched across the horizon. From this distance, the whirling blades of the towering wind turbines could be mistaken for tiny daggers.
“There’s the Southern Turbine Complex,” Laoshi said, pointing it out for Heqet. “We’ll be passing over it in an hour. That will be another magnificent sight to behold.”
AN HOUR LATER, Daoren inventoried equipment with Heqet in the aerostat’s cargo hold, aft of the control gondola. The teeming racks of sonic hammers, screw mines, and acoustic squibs excavated memories of his father.
Lucien had worked in silica sourcing when Daoren was a child. He’d once brought him and Mako to visit a similar aerostat—maybe this very aerostat—to show off the tools of his trade. He’d likely hoped to instill the same interest in his progeny. They’d spent a week on board, learning about the various grades of silica used in glass production, the techniques used to locate and extract the highest quality deposits, and more.
Daoren’s memory was fuzzy, but he recalled thinking little of the teachings. Silica sourcing hadn’t captivated his young mind. Still, his father’s detailed tutorials on the equipment had stuck with him. The information proved useful in explaining the exotic gear to Heqet. She’d dredged up a boundless cache of questions.
She motioned to the racks lining the port bulkhead. “What are these?”
The racks held a variety of screw mines; some no bigger than her arm, some twice her size. A corkscrew-shaped helix of armor-grade glass entwined each cylindrical body. Square guidance panels set in the face of each mine emitted subdued green light.
“Acoustic screw mines,” he said, caressing the helix of a larger device. “Set the depth and direction of the sonic blast, and they take care of the rest.”
She pointed at the adjacent rack. “And these?”
Tapered shafts filled the rack, each four feet long. Stubby T-shaped handles extended from the upper ends, suitable for gripping. The lower ends featured circular bases with small, bowl-like knobs; sonic headstocks.
“They’re sonic hammers. Ideal for breaking the hardest rocks.” He tapped her forehead and smirked. “Or the thickest skulls.”
Heqet swatted his hand aside, rasplaughing. She flashed a cryptic smile.
“What is it?”
“You’ve said more to me in the days since the Hollows than you did in the decade before it. I wish you hadn’t tarried so long to open your mouth.”
His cheeks burned. He turned his head away.
She squeezed his arm. “You also avoid looking at me . . . a lot.”
Daoren’s arm trembled at her touch. His throat narrowed.
“I used to watch you,” she said. “In the courtyard of your abode, your favorite haunt. We’d be in the parlor. Your parents, Mako, me. You’d be out there alone, nose stuck to your quantum til
e or swinging a sparring staff like you were fighting off all of Daqin Guojin.”
His stunned gaze found her again. “I didn’t know you watched me.”
“How could you? You were always so damn insular, marooned on your island of discontent.”
His palms grew clammy. He’d been deflecting the question since they escaped the grooll mill, unable to muster the nerve to voice it. He’d never get a better opportunity than now. He drew a deep breath to brace his spine. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Would I say no?”
He clenched his hands to stop them from shaking. “The kiss inside the Center. Was it part of a performance, or was it . . . ?”
He turned his head away again, unable to finish the question, unwilling to risk the consequences of its answer.
Heqet cupped his chin and brought his focus back to her. She leaned forward. Her lips tracked toward his.
On instinct, he pulled his head back.
“What’s wrong?”
His throat clamped shut, blocking the airflow to his larynx. Not that it mattered; he couldn’t have assembled a coherent response if he’d tried.
“Is it Mako?”
“I . . . I don’t . . .”
“He knew I had feelings for you,” she whispered.
Daoren rattled his head. He couldn’t have heard her right. “What did you say?
“He knew I had feelings. For you.”
The words tripped over themselves in their rush to escape his mouth. “But you talked of union . . . of reproduction . . . with him.”
“He talked of it,” Heqet said. “He knew my heart wasn’t his. I told him the night before his S.A.T.”
The muddling tingle of free-fall ravaged Daoren’s stomach. He gripped a rack to keep his balance. Mako’s foul mood on the day of his S.A.T. His bruised knuckles. Heqet’s conspicuous absence from the Center. The common link among the observations resolved with confounding clarity. Dizzy from the newfound comprehension, he grounded himself in Heqet’s eyes. He knew them better than his own.
He used to watch her as well, stealing glances whenever she wasn’t looking, wishing he possessed the courage to open up to her. Not once had he suspected she was doing the same. She’d been good at hiding her feelings, but now her eyes spoke the truth. At last he saw in them the same feeling he’d borne in his heart all these years.
He leaned forward, his lips tracking toward hers. He closed his eyes and—
“Jireni aeroshrikes!” Laoshi shouted from the control gondola. “Ten miles astern and closing fast!”
Daoren opened his eyes, face inches from Heqet’s. In her eyes, he saw the same feeling he carried in his heart.
Alarm.
8
The Battle of the Southern Turbine Complex
PYROS SURVEYED THE aeroshrike’s bridge from its aft bulkhead.
Black tinting infused its armored windows, cloaking the cavernous space. Tactical lighting doused thirty Jireni in a blood-red pall. They manned scattered consoles; electro-optical sensors, sonic weapons, air-link communications, navigation and maneuvering, ballast and trim, and damage control. Another one hundred men and women would be assembling in gun turrets and duty positions throughout the vessel, impelled by Narses’ command for action stations.
Pyros sighed. He couldn’t help wonder if he might have prevented all this. After a harried departure from the southern aerodrome, he’d flirted with the notion of commandeering the vessel. Overpowering Narses and Julinian would have been a simple matter; the two hadn’t seen a day’s combat in their lives. He knew a few dozen crew members from past missions. They could be trusted to side with him. Most were unfamiliar, however. He knew not where their loyalties lay. He’d also toyed with the idea of sabotage to slow their pursuit, but Narses would have ordered the second aeroshrike to carry out the mission.
Most of all, he’d delayed taking action because he didn’t know why Daoren, Laoshi, and the others had fled the city-state. It reeked of suicide, but the Unum’s reaction to the contents of the glass scroll suggested they had a purpose for leaving—one that shook the ruler of Daqin Guojin to his core. The fact that Narses, a boy who had trouble finding his way to the waste chamber in the Assembly, had brought two aeroshrikes to within striking distance of the geology aerostat confirmed that the Unum had known all along where it was going.
Pyros swallowed his suspicions and shrugged off the sense of unease. He strode past the consoles and joined Narses and Julinian at the forward windows.
The geology aerostat cruised five miles ahead, holding an altitude of two thousand feet. Five miles farther, hundreds of whirling turbine blades scribed circular contrails against the blue sky and gray sea.
He grimaced at the aerostat’s wretched tactical position. His instincts told him he’d never learn the reason they’d fled Daqin Guojin. The answer would die along with Daoren and the others in a few minutes.
Narses cacklebracked. “They’re trapped between a rock and a rock.”
Julinian yawned. Since they’d departed, her aloof manner bespoke disregard for the mission, like she viewed it as a tedious necessity, an inconvenience she had to endure. She’d spent most of her time at the air-link console near the bridge’s aft bulkhead, communicating with a party she refused to identify. Pyros wagered it was a romantic partner in Zhongguo Cheng. Julinian regularly disappeared from the Assembly for hours on end. It was one of several habits that leant her a modicum of frailty and, with it, humanity.
Over the past weeks, his interactions with her had brought one fact into burnished relief; she wasn’t as dim as she pretended to be. The Unum’s niece possessed a veiled reserve of intellect and cunning, and a keen eye for detail. She’d probably been masking her true nature all her life to present less of a threat to the predators in her family.
“They can climb and clear the turbines, cousin,” Julinian said, sounding weary from the effort of speaking.
“I know that! We’ll knock them out of the sky first!”
“If I may, Unum Potentate,” Pyros said, using the honorific title that Julinian was incapable of uttering. “Engaging them after we clear the turbine complex will give us the most advantageous airspace for maneuver.”
“We’ll engage them now!” Narses stabbed a comms tile mounted above the forward windows. “This is the Unum Potentate. Close and destroy the aerostat.”
A crackling voice emanated from the tile. “Acknowledged.”
Pyros shook his head. Narses epitomized Daqin Guojin’s ills; the intelligent people were full of doubts, the dense people full of confidence.
The second aeroshrike surged past the port windows, one thousand feet away. Its airscrews thrummed at full power, drawing the vessel forward and shrinking the distance to the geology aerostat.
Narses folded his arms across his chest. His eyes gleamed. Their twinkling sclerae mirrored the sheen of the aeroshrike’s black ceramic-armor panels, perhaps reflecting the thrill of seeing their first close action.
Pyros sighed. He knew how brutally short the action would be.
DAOREN PACED BEFORE the forward windows. “Where are they?”
“One aeroshrike is closing,” Laoshi said from the navigation console. “Four miles astern. We’ll be within its gun range at one mile.”
Heqet and Cordelia flanked Laoshi. They held hands, lips thin and bloodless—doubtless thanks to the tactical picture unfolding on his monitors.
Daoren halted and faced the windows.
Three miles ahead, an overlapping screen of wind turbines stretched for miles in depth, their spinning blades topping out at two thousand feet. White contrails marked the lowest arc of their trajectory. The blade tips bottomed at one hundred feet above the Sea of Storm’s wind-tossed waves. One hundred-twenty feet at most.
Daoren grunted, shunting aside the angst hampering his thoughts. If ever he needed to clear his mind, this was the moment. One thing was obvious—flying through the wind turbines meant suicide. They could climb and clear the blades easi
ly enough, but it would only prolong the inevitable. That left one option.
One terrifying option.
He examined the gap between the blade tips and the sea, visualizing the maneuver. The resulting image constricted his throat. “How high is this aerostat?”
“We’re at two thousand feet,” Laoshi said.
“No—in terms of its structure.”
“Um, sixty feet? Seventy? I’m not sure.”
“And an aeroshrike?”
“At least twice that,” Laoshi said. “Why?”
Daoren eyed the sea’s roiling surface. Wave height would be the determining factor. Maybe they could squeeze through the gap. Maybe they could evade the aeroshrikes by staying within the confines of the complex, beyond the reach of their guns. He couldn’t be sure, but he was certain the other options would lead to their more immediate demise. “Take us down!”
“Down?” Heqet and Cordelia asked, striking a dissonant tone.
“At full speed!”
He rushed by the navigation console, grabbing Heqet’s hand on the fly. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“To defend ourselves.”
Daoren raced aft into the cargo hold, pulling Heqet with him. He snatched a sonic hammer from the rack and passed it to her.
The hammer slipped through her hands. Its unwieldy headstock clunked into the deck. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
He grabbed another for himself and slung it onto his back. “You’ll see.”
He clambered up a ladder leading to a hatch in the deckhead.
PYROS PACED BEFORE the forward windows. Beside him, Narses shifted from foot to foot, munching grooll and smacking his lips. Julinian stood sandstone-still next to her cousin, hands clasped behind her back, engaged and detached all at once.
Three miles ahead, the geology aerostat dove for the sea. A mile-and-a-half astern, the second aeroshrike gave chase.
“They descend to their death,” Narses said between mouthfuls.
For once, the Unum Potentate could be right. The wind turbines loomed a mile beyond the aerostat. It couldn’t thread the blades without being cut to—
