by Magus Tor
Jonathon grunted. “You're right about 05. In fact, I'd like you to stop in 01 if possible and take a good, long look around. The Resistance leader there is starting to get antsy that we're not taking the biggest City first—which, as I tried to explain, is foolish logic. He could use a talking to. I think he's holding back on sending men down here, wanting to keep them for himself to mount an attack in 01. But I'd like you to try and come up with some plans for how exactly we're going to take 01 anyway. It'll have to be done at some point, and we know it's going to be a challenge. I'd feel better if we had at least some sort of idea of how the hell we're going to do it.”
“Fine by me,” Nicholas said. “So let me take Aurelia with me. At least that way you won't need to worry about her. She's in safe hands, and you can concentrate on what's going on here.”
“Agreed,” said Jonathon. “And thanks for offering. You're right; I'll worry about her much less if she's with you. Just try and get both her and yourself back here in one piece and as soon as you can, okay?”
“I have a very healthy sense of self-preservation, thank you very much,” said Nicholas.
Jonathon laughed. “Best go find Lukas and talk about transport options. I don't see him letting you take one of those cargo pods for just the two of you.”
So it’s set, thought Aurelia. She was glad she'd be going with Nicholas. He was good company, and she hadn't liked the idea of travelling with a stranger. Jonathon poked his head into the dome.
“I heard everything,” she said, forestalling his explanations. “Thank you.”
He shrugged. “You should be thanking Nicholas, I think. Now, come on. You won't be leaving for a while yet. Let's get you some breakfast. I've spoken to Elza, and you're out of the field hospital for today. She wants you dealing with the walking wounded here in camp.”
Aurelia stretched and sat up. Sleeping on the floor wasn't exactly comfortable, but she guessed it was good for her back. And now that Jonathon had mentioned breakfast, she was starving.
Nicholas came for her just before dusk, when the air was buzzing with the tired chatter of hungry men and the light had a touch of orange to it.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” she said, picking up her pack.
Seeing her getting ready to leave, Jonathon jogged over. “Not without a kiss, you don't,” he said. He bent to kiss her tenderly, provoking wolf whistles and cheers from the surrounding soldiers, which he ignored. “Be careful.”
“I will,” she said.
“And look after her,” he said, turning to Nicholas.
“I will.”
Aurelia hugged Jonathon tightly. “Look after yourself too,” she whispered. “I'll be back soon.” She felt him nod in assent.
Releasing him, Aurelia shifted her pack on her shoulder so that it was more comfortable. Then she looked at Nicholas. “Let's go,” she said.
They walked to the very edge of the island, being careful not to slip as the ground got swampier and swampier. When they reached the very limit of where they could walk, Aurelia saw a small boat tied up. Nicholas put his pack down and reached out, pulling the boat closer so that Aurelia could hop in. He then handed her his pack, which was astonishingly heavy, before getting in himself.
“What have you got in there?” she asked, putting his pack on the floor.
“Wait and see,” he said with a grin.
He picked up a paddle and slowly began to punt the boat away from the shore. Aurelia felt the rocking movement of the water and swallowed, feeling slightly sick. But the feeling passed, and she sat relatively comfortably as Nicholas began rowing them out into a channel.
“Okay,” he said, once they were underway. “We're going just to the island after the next one, and we're going to need to work in silence in a few minutes, right? No sound at all.”
Aurelia nodded, figuring she might as well practice being quiet now.
“Once we're there, I want you to follow me and do as I do. That's all. Got it?”
She nodded again, and Nicholas smiled at her. “We'll be fine,” he said.
There was another ten minutes of the swaying of the boat and the soft splashing of the paddle before they beached on the island that Nicholas wanted. Night was fast creeping in now, and there was a dark grey dusk, making it difficult to see more than a couple of metres. Nicholas tied up the boat, then helped Aurelia out before grabbing his pack. He put his finger to his lips, signalling silence, then turned once to orient himself before making off into the foliage.
Careful not to damage the plants, Aurelia followed him. They walked quietly over the loamy ground until the foliage began to thin out and she could see a collection of residential buildings. There were the sounds of people nearby, but no one too close. Nicholas was looking for something, scanning through the plants until he found it, and then he pushed his way through the jungle until they came up behind a transport pod. It was a personal pod, and a new model from what Aurelia could see, its metal gleaming in what was left of the light.
Nicholas dropped his pack, opened it, and with his one hand took out a large cube, which he placed on the ground. Then he grabbed a multi-tool and slipped it into his pocket. He held up a hand to Aurelia, telling her to wait where she was. Then silently he slipped through the foliage, carrying the cube with him. She watched as he deftly removed a panel on the side of the pod and took out another of the cubes, much smaller than the one he’d carried. He switched the two cubes over, putting the larger one in the pod, then replaced the panel. The entire process took less than five minutes. He then turned and beckoned to Aurelia, who joined him.
There was a click, and he lifted the bottom edge of the pod door, making a gap just big enough to squeeze through.
“Keep down,” he hissed as she slid through the gap.
Obediently she crouched on the floor of the pod as he too slid in, dragging their packs behind him. Then he did something that she'd seen once before. He removed the panel below the control console, freeing the manual controls of the pod.
“Crap,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Sometimes I forget I've only got one hand,” he half-laughed, half-hissed back at her. “When I say go, I need you to press that blue button, okay?”
He held tight to the control column, angling it upwards.
“Go!”
Aurelia pressed the blue button, and the pod shot into the air. There was none of the hovering or humming that she was used to—it was like a rocket take-off, the vehicle being thrust straight upwards.
“Best keep your head down for a minute,” advised Nicholas, gripping the controls as the pod turned and accelerated.
She waited, counting to thirty in her head before he said: “Alrighty, safe now. Sit up. We're on our way!”
“What exactly just happened?” she asked slowly, pulling herself up into the passenger seat.
“A little quality engineering,” said Nicholas. “If you want the technical bits, I replaced the battery with a larger and more powerful one from one of the cargo pods. We wouldn't make it to 05 on the energy of a personal pod battery. Then I reversed the emergency stop thrusters and gave us an emergency start instead. Didn't want to wait around while this thing hovered and fiddled around getting ready to go whilst someone noticed we were stealing their pod and started shooting.”
“So we stole it,” said Aurelia.
“I prefer ‘liberated,’ but yes. All in a good cause, though.”
She shook her head. Nicholas was incredibly smart, but combine that intelligence with Lukas's sometimes unorthodox ways of doing things, and the two of them could really be trouble.
Nicholas was replacing the console panel, switching the pod over to automatic. He keyed in coordinates, the pod shifted direction slightly, and he sat back.
“All good to go, headed to 05.”
“Are we safe flying?” she asked.
He nodded. “For the time being, anyway. I spoke to your father before we left, and he advised c
oming down in the desert behind the caverns, further away from the City, and coming in on foot. We can't be shot down whilst flying, but we might be coming in for landing. So we'll see how things look when we get closer.” He kicked off his shoes and crossed his legs on his seat.
“And after 05, we're headed to 01?” she wanted to know.
“We'll see,” said Nicholas, showing no surprise that she knew of the plan. “I'll try and get you back to 02 if I can and then go on to 01 alone. There's no point you being dragged along if you don't want to be.”
She noticed that his eyes brightened when he mentioned 01, and she wondered why.
“Got business there?” she asked.
“You know, just looking around.” He shrugged.
Yep, he was definitely up to something.
“Want to tell me more?”
He laughed. “No keeping anything from you, is there? Well, actually, maybe I could use your input. You know Elza pretty well.”
Aha. She should have known that it had something to do with the beautiful blonde doctor. “Sure I do, I guess. So what's up?”
Nicholas squirmed a little in his seat. “It's pretty personal,” he said. “But the thing is, well, I want Elza to marry me.”
“But that's amazing news!” burst out Aurelia, genuinely happy for them.
“Not so fast,” Nicholas said, more seriously now. “She won't, and I've got a good idea of exactly why. She worries that she's older than I am, and she thinks she can't have children. Look, I know all the arguments about Clone breeding, and I know about human breeding too, and maybe she's right. I don't know.”
He looks wistful—sad, Aurelia thought.
“What she doesn't understand,” he continued, “is that it really doesn't matter to me. Family is important to her, and that's the only reason I care, honestly. So, I started thinking.”
Oh dear, thought Aurelia. “And what did you come up with?” she asked.
“You know that Elza's parents had a four after she left for Lunar, right?”
Aurelia remembered Elza talking about this. “His name's Mattias, I think,” she offered.
“I know,” responded Nicholas. “And he's much, much younger than Elza. He can only be around nine or ten, I think. Maybe a year or so older. So, I was thinking, what if I found him? Elza would have her family back.”
“And then maybe she wouldn't mind so much not having children of her own,” Aurelia finished. “I think...” What did she think? Imagining that Nicholas could track down one orphaned child in a world currently at War was crazy. But... “It's an amazing idea,” she said, finally. “And I think it's the best thing you could ever do for Elza.”
“But you mustn't say anything,” Nicholas cautioned. “I haven't found him yet, and I don't want to get her hopes up. Just in case, well, just in case anything's happened to him, you know?”
Aurelia nodded. “Understood. But I'm guessing you think he's in 01?”
“That's where Elza's family are from, and it's unlikely that an orphaned child would be taken out of his home City,” said Nicholas.
“You should try looking into the City databases,” said Aurelia, thinking of how helpful access to the City 04 database had been when she was trying to find her mother a month or so earlier.
“I just haven't had time,” Nicholas said.
“Well, do it now,” she suggested.
“You won't be bored?”
“I think I'll survive,” she said, taking out her personal screen as Nicholas did the same.
Soon he was tapping away at his screen, trying to track personal numbers and find out what had happened long ago to a small boy who had lost both his parents and had never met his brilliant older sister.
Aurelia didn't switch her screen on yet. She sat, staring out the window, watching the night fly past her. She could see the moon now, shining and white, no glimpse of the neon and buildings that were really up there.
She knew her medical history, had always been interested in the field. In fact, there were times when it was only her knowledge of old surgical techniques or medical procedures that had saved her patients. Elza's situation was a tough one, and one stemming from almost two centuries ago.
There had been a time when viruses and bacteria were man's greatest enemy. But as medicines had improved, many of the diseases that had once killed thousands and even millions of people were eradicated. What had really tipped the balance in favour of the doctors over the diseases was the advent of genetic engineering. This process, long used on plants and foodstuffs, had eventually made it possible to replace certain genes in a baby with ones that were stronger or healthier. You could, for example, give a child in the womb a genetic advantage against diabetes or cancer, or any one of hundreds of old-fashioned diseases with names that Aurelia had only read in textbooks.
Of course, the process became more than just this, though. Eventually, in the golden age of GE, as it was known, gene replacement became common not simply for health reasons but also because some genes were just more attractive than others. A blonde-haired child might be more desirable than a dark-haired one, for example, or a tall boy better than a short one.
GE was widespread in human medicine for about half a century before disturbing results started to crop up in research studies, and isolated cases of unidentifiable diseases became more and more common. It was eventually realised that by redesigning nature, GE had gone past a certain limit. As older diseases were being eradicated, new ones were being born, ones that were more dangerous, ones that there were no treatments for. Not only that, but as GE replaced unwanted or faulty genetic material in more and more children, those children became more and more genetically similar. This resulted in more genetic mutations in their children, who therefore needed to have more genetic material replaced—and so on, and so on.
In 2101, GE was banned by every country in the old Empire, but it was too late. Much of the damage had already been done. Having children naturally had become extremely difficult, and the levels of miscarriages and still births had skyrocketed as genetic mutations rendered many foetuses unviable. Aurelia herself had been genetically tested before her marriage to Jonathon to ensure that, should they wish to, they were able to breed together. It was these strict breeding laws that had, in a way, made having children easier. More genetic material was introduced into the breeding pool, and slowly, more healthy children were born. However, once a woman reached a certain age, genetic mutations were more and more common, and over time the fertile period of women had become shorter to compensate for this.
All of this was why, despite being only a decade or so older than Aurelia, Elza was very likely unable to have children of her own. Or at least healthy ones. And in the Empire, there was no such thing as an unhealthy child. Aurelia knew that Jonathon would change all of these laws, but those changes would probably be too late for women like Elza. Add to that the fact that Nicholas was a Clone, and Clone breeding in itself was risky, and the likelihood of the couple’s parenting their own child was very, very slim.
Aurelia sighed and switched on her personal screen. In all honesty, finding Elza's brother would be the best chance that the couple would have for a family. She hoped that Nicholas was capable of tracking the young Mattias down, wherever he was. Seeing how determinedly he was tapping at his screen, though, she thought that if anyone could do it, it would be him.
The flight passed slowly. They read, and Nicholas found some hopeful leads in the City 01 database. They even played a few games of chess, an old game that Nicholas had introduced Aurelia to. She even won a game, something that she thought irritated Nicholas more than he showed. As the night got deeper, they slept, curled up in their seats as the pod flew itself over the oceans and continents.
A shrill beeping wakened Aurelia. She opened her eyes to see Nicholas tapping the centre console, then removing the console panel to once more access the pod's manual controls.
“Don't worry,” he said, noticing her move. “The alarm was only t
o tell me that we're close to 05. We need to keep an eye out now and decide how and where we're going to land.”
Judging from the light, it was an hour or so after dawn, and they were approaching the City from the side of the cavern where Aurelia's parents and many other members of the Resistance Army were sheltering. The desert below them looked barren and empty, and they flew on, noticing no signs yet of anyone around. Nicholas left the pod under automatic control until, all at once, he grunted, pressed a button, and resumed control himself.
“See that?” he said, gesturing with his head towards the horizon.
Aurelia squinted and could just see a haze of grey spiralling up into the sky. “Fire?”
“Which means people,” said Nicholas. “Looks like this is more or less as close as we can get to the cavern without being noticed.”
“How far?”
He looked down at the console screen. “About a three-hour walk or so, at a guess.” He turned the pod to the right a little. “Hold up. I'll see if I can get us a little closer.”
They flew for another ten minutes, bearing slightly to the right, before Nicholas brought the pod down into a hover and then dropped it onto the sand.
“Two-hour walk—not bad, eh?” he said proudly.
Aurelia shook her head, sighed, and prepared to get out of the pod. She'd had experience walking on these desert sands before, and it wasn't something she was eager to do again. The shifting sand made forward progress a nightmare, and she resigned herself to aching thighs by the time they were through.
Jumping down from the pod, she was hit by the stultifying heat, even this early in the morning. Another thing she'd experienced before. She reached into her pack and pulled out a long strip of fabric, which she wound around her head and the bottom part of her face. It would protect her from the sun as well as keeping her mouth relatively clear of sand. Nicholas's blue eyes were dancing; he loved being in the heat. He picked up his pack, checked his screen for directions once more, and then asked if she was ready.
