Landfall (The Reach, Book 2)

by Mark R. Healy

  “What is it?” she gasped, looking about desperately and fearing the worst.

  “Calm down,” Knile said. “We’ve reached the perimeter of the first coordinates.”

  “And?” Roman said eagerly.

  “I think I’m seeing new coordinates on the tattoo,” Knile said. “But I need somewhere darker to be sure.” He shuffled through the crowd and made his way over to the edge of the street, where the pavement was drenched in the shadows of the apartments above. He covered his forearm with his hand and peered down at the tattoo. “Yes, I can see new coordinates. There must be a transmitter nearby that’s sending out the right frequency to light them up.”

  “What does it say?” Roman said.

  “No secret invitation, just numbers.” He began to tap on his holophone. “There, I’ve plugged them in. Looks like the final spot is…” He trailed off.

  “What?” Talia said.

  “It’s just a few doors down.”

  The three of them looked at each other with a mixture of dread and anticipation. It was the kind of look they might have exchanged had they been standing on the edge of a bridge, preparing to take the plunge down into the icy depths of the river below. We’re this close. Are we ready to go all the way? Do we dare?

  “Well, let’s check it out,” Roman enthused.

  “All right,” Knile said. He glanced at Talia.

  “Yeah. I’m in.”

  Knile pointed. “This way.”

  They stepped out into the street again and continued the short distance along the thoroughfare. Knile’s eyes darted around the street frantically as he tried to take in everything at once. This close to their objective, he wanted to be alert to any sign of danger. If something was amiss, or if there were traps waiting for them, he wanted to know about them before it was too late.

  However, everything seemed normal. A group of young boys were playing marbles on the pavement. An old lady in a grey shawl passed by, complaining about the rent, and another walked at her side with her hand on her elbow, nodding in agreement. Two adolescent girls shared a joke on a balcony above, pointing at someone in the throng below. A pair of men lugged a heavy steel axle on their shoulders, grunting and sweating under its considerable weight.

  Knile had become accustomed to spotting threats over the years, recognising them with a skill that bordered on prescience.

  But right now he felt nothing. There were no warning tendrils scraping at the edges of his consciousness, no alarm bells sounding in the back of his mind.

  He didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing.

  They arrived at the place, and Knile had to double- and triple-check the coordinates on his holophone to verify that they were correct.

  “Is this it?” Roman said over his shoulder.

  “Yes.”

  “It can’t be.”

  “This is it, Roman.” He glanced at the boy. “Unless it’s all one big hoax.”

  As one they turned to the little workshop that lay smack bang in the centre of the coordinates that had been revealed to them moments before. It was a pokey little place, cluttered with all manner of machine parts and trays full of grease-coated bearings. There were boxes of screws and nails, rows of fan blades. There was one occupant inside, a young woman with black hair and a tattoo of a snake under her left ear that ran down her neck. She’d been scraping at the intake of an air filtration unit with a screwdriver when they’d arrived, and now she stopped and looked over at them expectantly.

  “Help you guys?” she said, wiping grease from her fingers onto her shirt. “You need a sucker fixed?”

  “No,” Knile said. “We’re looking for someone.”

  The woman turned back to her work. “Then unless that someone is me, you’re not going to find them. I’m the only one here.”

  “Is that so?” Knile said.

  The woman glared at him. “Get lost, man. I don’t have no time for games.”

  Roman gripped Knile’s shirt. “This isn’t the place, Knile. No way. You must have read the coordinates wrong.”

  “I didn’t read them wrong.”

  “Then it’s a hoax, like you said,” Talia chimed in. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Show her the tattoo,” Roman urged. “Go on.”

  Knile glanced back out into the street, considering what to do. Then he stepped further into the shop and held up his arm.

  “Someone gave me this tattoo,” he said, and for the first time the woman stopped what she was doing and gave Knile her full attention. “There were coordinates embedded inside it that led me here. To this workshop. Do you know anything about that?”

  The woman gave him a measuring look. “Sounds like a neat trick.”

  “It says ‘Skybreach’. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Me?” she said. “Nah. I’m just a dumb tech.” She nodded her head over Knile’s shoulder. “But it probably means something to him.”

  The three of them turned to see a man who had appeared at the back of the workshop, standing still and watching them closely. At first glance Knile thought he was wearing a mask, but then he realised that the man’s face was heavily scarred, great ruts of reddish skin running diagonally from the top left of his face to the bottom right. He was bald, and his scalp was also ruined and mottled with dark patches of coarse flesh.

  Talia gasped and took a step back, but the man ignored her. He had eyes for only one person.

  “Knile Oberend,” the man said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  25

  Talia and Roman looked at Knile, but he could only offer them a bewildered shake of his head in return. He’d never seen the scarred man before in his life.

  “Who are you?” Knile said. “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.”

  The man held up an index finger as if suggesting that he needed a moment before replying.

  “Iris,” the man said, walking slowly forward. “Make sure we’re not disturbed, please.”

  The woman with the snake tattoo got up and moved over to the door to stand guard, effectively blocking their escape, and Knile reacted immediately.

  “Whoa!” he said. “Step away from the door or–”

  “You’re in no danger here, Knile,” the man said calmly. “You can leave at any time if that’s what you want.”

  “Is that so?”

  The man gestured toward the door. “Go. I won’t stop you, nor will Iris.”

  Knile exchanged a glance with Talia, then returned his attention to the man.

  “All right. Start talking.”

  The scarred man nodded. “My name is Emil Baranek. I’m the one who’s responsible for you being here. I’m the one who sent you that.” He pointed to the tattoo on Knile’s forearm.

  “You told the kid to tag me over in Gaslight?”

  “Yes. Seems a bit crude, doesn’t it? It’s effective, though. You’re here, aren’t you?”

  Knile glanced back at the doorway, but Iris hadn’t moved.

  “You’re part of Skybreach?” he said.

  “I’m more than that,” Emil said. “I’m its founder. I’m at the core of everything that happens within it.”

  Emil stopped a short distance away. From this proximity it was evident that the extent of his scarring was quite pronounced. His ears were misshapen and diminished, as if they had been partially melted away; his nose was flattened and his eyes stared out darkly from between the folds of his ruined skin.

  “I’m sorry about my appearance,” Emil said, noting Knile’s stare. There was a twinkle of humour in those dark eyes. “Quite the freakshow, yes?”

  “I’ve seen worse,” Knile said.

  “Not outside a morgue, I hope,” Emil said. He leaned comfortably on the bench by his side. “Would you care to sit?”

  “We’re fine,” Knile said. “Say what you have to say.”

  “Sure. Let me tell you what Skybreach is, and how it came about.” Emil took a deep breath as he gathered his thoughts. “There is a sys
tem in place on this planet that is grossly unfair. It’s skewed toward the rich and the powerful, the privileged. I’m sure you’re all aware of this already. There’s only one option available to wretches like you and me, those who were left behind, and that’s through the top of the Reach. Earth has no future and there’s only one way out.”

  “You can skip the history lesson,” Knile said. “Just get on with it.”

  “Getting aboard that railcar and travelling up the Wire… that’s all most of us think about, right? It’s the only thing that matters. Yet, the allocation of seating aboard that railcar is a horribly corrupt process. There’s no chance for the common man to escape. In effect, this system determines who lives and who dies. The toxins get worse and our ability to cope with them becomes lessened as our pool of resources dwindle.

  “I don’t like this system. I don’t like the way it favours the fat aristocrats in Lux and I don’t like the way it ignores everyone else. It’s wrong and it needs to change.”

  “I hope you’ve got something better than this to tell us,” Knile said. “Every street urchin on every corner of this damn city already knows this.”

  “But they don’t know how to change it,” Emil said fervently.

  “And you can,” Knile said flatly.

  Emil seemed to consider this for a moment. “I wish you’d all met my wife,” he said suddenly. “She was a beautiful woman. Full of heart. Full of vigour. She lit up my world every minute of every hour, always pulled me out of despair when I felt hopeless, gave me courage when I was afraid. We planned to have a family,” he said as a sad smile touched his lips. “Three children. No more, no less. She was very particular about that. And one of them had to be a girl.” Emil chuckled. “She was a woman who knew what she wanted.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” Knile said.

  “One day something happened to her,” Emil said, and the smile faded from his face. “That love for life, that spirit, just simply… broke. She’d come to a realisation, you see. She’d finally arrived at the same understanding as the rest of us.” He looked pointedly at Knile. “She realised that we were stuck here on Earth, condemned to die, with no hope of escape.” He ran his fingers lightly along the ridges on his face, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “She climbed up onto the edge of a balcony far up the Reach and she looked out at the ruin of this world, and she couldn’t see the beauty in it anymore. She couldn’t see the hope.” His mouth twisted as he remembered. “She leapt from there, cast herself into oblivion because she couldn’t face a life without a future.” Emil glanced at each of them in turn. “I didn’t want anyone to see a loved one go through that ever again. I didn’t want them to see the things I’d seen, the things I could never erase from my memory. I wanted to give people hope, make them believe that there was still a future for them, even if they were nothing more than a simple carpenter or a farmer. A beggar. Anyone should be able to leave. That was why I devoted my life to changing the system. That was why I created Skybreach.”

  “You sound like you’ve been through a lot,” Talia said compassionately. “I’m sorry about your wife.”

  “Thank you.” Emil sighed. “I still think of her constantly. She’s the driving force within me, the one who compels me to get up each and every day and redouble my efforts.” His mouth hardened. “It will be done. Skybreach will change this world. We’ll give everyone a chance to leave.”

  “How?” Knile said.

  “Skybreach is an expertly crafted team of men and women who are the best at what they do. I’ve spent years scouring the dregs of the Earth to find them, to bring them together. I’ve gathered people from all walks of life – from science and medicine and technical disciplines. I’ve brought in architects, builders, botanists, you name it.”

  “That’s all very nice, but how are botanists going to help get you off-world?” Knile said.

  “Those people are part of the team for what happens after we get off-world,” Emil said. “For Stage Two. For Stage One, the process of actually taking over the Wire, I have different personnel.”

  “Such as?”

  “Combat specialists and military tacticians, ex-Enforcers who know the Reach–”

  “You think you can take it by force?” Knile said, astounded.

  “Not entirely. I also have my ace in the hole – a hacker who can get into the Consortium’s back-end and turn things in our favour.”

  “That’s not possible,” Knile said. “Not unless he has access to Consortium hardware that’s been verified on their network. It’s not accessible from outside. Believe me, I would know.”

  “It’s very much possible,” Emil said with a grin, “and your presence here proves that, Knile.”

  “Huh?”

  “How do you think I found you when you returned to the Reach? I had the kid walk straight up to you and plant that tattoo on your arm, remember? Haven’t you wondered how I did that?”

  Knile considered that. “Well, now that you mention it…”

  “My hacker has access to the Consortium manifests,” Emil said. “We see the name of every person who travels aboard the railcar. Your name was one of many that we’d flagged. When you popped up, we were there, ready to invite you to the team.”

  “So why me?” Knile said. “What can I offer you?”

  “Don’t be modest, Knile. I know what they used to call you. The ‘Ghost of the Reach’.”

  “I haven’t been called that for a long time.”

  Emil stepped closer. “You know the inner workings of the Reach better than anyone. We have access to your history. We’ve seen what you’ve done. You’d make a valuable addition to Skybreach if you agreed to join us.”

  Knile glanced at his two companions. “Let’s get one thing straight right now, Emil. I won’t be joining anything unless Talia and Roman come with me. If you’re not going to accept them too, we might as well end this conversation right now.”

  Emil considered this. “Are these people your family?”

  Knile looked at Talia and Roman in turn. “Yeah,” he said, smiling. “They are.”

  “Then I don’t see why not. Others who have joined have brought wives, husbands, children. After all, we’ll need families when we make a new start on Enceladus.”

  “Enceladus?” Knile said, perplexed. “The moon of Saturn? What’s that got to do with it?”

  “That’s part of the next stage,” Emil explained. “We have a cruiser captain off-world who is willing to take us to Enceladus. More than willing, in fact. The habitat on Enceladus is filled with an aging population. They’re in need of young, fit citizens to bring balance to their society. There’s room for hundreds, if not thousands. It’s all been arranged.”

  Knile smirked. “It sounds too good to be true.”

  “A lot of work has gone into this operation, Knile, and there is still much to be done. But we are getting close to making it happen. The planets are about to align, so to speak.” Emil spread his hands. “So. Your answer?”

  Knile pursed his lips. “Can we have a minute to talk about this?”

  “Of course. I should point out that this is a one-time offer. After today, there will be no further invitations. You’re free to walk out that door, but once you do there’s no turning back.”

  Knile nodded, then linked an arm around Talia’s and Roman’s shoulders and led them away from Emil. Iris watched them from the doorway for a moment, then turned her back on them to afford them a moment of privacy.

  “So, what do you think?” Knile whispered.

  “Like you said, it almost seems too good to be true,” Talia said. “But it sounds legit to me. I think it’s worth seeing what they have to offer. If we don’t like it we can always leave.”

  “If he lets us,” Knile said.

  “If he was going to take us by force he would have done that by now,” Roman said. “He’s got us within reach right here in the workshop.”

  “I guess so,” Knile said. “And everything he’s said so
far makes sense, even though we have no proof that it’s true.”

  Roman stepped back. “Let me try one more thing,” he said. He walked back toward Emil. “Say, do you have a guy called Mattus working for you?”

  Emil seemed mildly surprised. “Yes, as a matter of fact we do. How do you know that?”

  “I used to work with him back in Grove.”

  Emil smiled. “Small world.”

  “Is there any chance I can talk to him?” Roman said.

  Emil shrugged. “I don’t see why not. He’s here in the complex with us right now.” He lifted a holophone to his ear and spoke into it. “Yes, everything’s fine. I wonder if you can send Mattus out here? Yes. Good.” He turned back to Roman. “Your friend is on his way.”

  They stood as an awkward silence descended upon them. Emil seemed to have finished his spiel and now had nothing more to say. Knile was still weighing things up, trying to find a reason not to buy into Skybreach, but he couldn’t think of one. If everything checked out with Roman’s friend Mattus, he could not see why they shouldn’t put their trust in Emil and his people.

  Moments later, a secret panel opened in the back wall of the workshop and a young man stepped out. He seemed confused at first, but then his eyes fell upon Roman and his face lit up.

  “Roamer!” he said, delighted. He walked forward and gave the boy a hearty embrace. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hey, Mattus. My friend Knile got the call-up to join Skybreach.”

  “That’s cool.” Mattus pointed at Knile. “This guy?”

  Knile gave him a nod. “Yeah. This guy.”

  “What’s your skillset?” Mattus said enthusiastically.

  “Jack of all trades.”

  Mattus seemed unfamiliar with the phrase, glancing around uncertainly, then shrugged.

  “So are you coming along for the ride?” he said to Roman.

  “I don’t know yet. What’s it like here?”

  Mattus smiled. “It’s very cool, man. I get to work on the things I love, and play a small part in changing the world at the same time. What’s not to like?”