The information control panel desk rose up higher here than along the rest of its stretch, to just above Anaxis’s head. There was a screen like Anaxis had seen in Maleira’s apartment, silent and black, that dominated most of the bump in the desk, and to the left of this, a number of lights, which were broken. In the middle of this sequence of lights was a hole for the amulet-key Anaxis was carrying. He took it out of his bag and held it up in the dim light to see which way it was supposed to fit in the information system, then slowly pushed the key into place. It didn’t fit at first, not until he flipped it over and tried again. It was slow to slide in, but with a bit of jerking and twisting, the key passed through to where it was completely inserted. Anaxis tried turning it to the left, which did nothing, then turned it to the right. It didn’t rotate completely at first, but he felt movement, and so Anaxis used both hands to twist harder, sending the key all the way around the tumbler to just before where it had started.
There was a deep, resounding thud that came from somewhere in the bowels of the mothership, and then one of the lights above the key started to glow red. The one above that started to glow blue, and the one above that, green. The large screen to the right of the lights flickered, then went out again, as the lights cycled and then went off again, one by one. Then there followed a few long seconds of silence.
“Was that it?” Anaxis asked aloud.
He looked around the information desk to see if there was any other activity, which there didn’t appear to be. Anaxis turned the key back around the other way, then again, to where it locked in place. Only the blue light flashed now; the screen didn’t flicker and the other lights didn’t do a thing.
“Huh,” Anaxis said, unable to believe how hard it had been to come such a long way and find that his key from the crash in the desert did not, apparently, do anything but activate a small, blue light. He considered taking the key back with him to where Mills and Maleira were waiting, but decided against it.
He turned and started back toward the staircase at the far end of the very large room, cursing the birds he passed and stubbing his toes as he stomped angrily across the floor. Somewhere along the way, he realized that a number of lights were now glowing that hadn’t been before, all along the walls of the ship and on the occasional table-implanted information display.
“Maybe it worked after all,” Anaxis wondered aloud to himself.
He exited the ship and then walked all the way back to where Mills and Maleira were arguing over the rules of the game they had invented, without stopping.
“Well,” he said loudly when neither of them noticed him approach the gate, “That was that.”
“Anaxis!” Maleira said excitedly when he noticed the boy standing with his arms crossed. “What happened? What was it like? Tell me, tell me everything!”
“Well,” Anaxis began, “I found where the key should go. And I put it in.”
“And?” Maleira asked.
“Stuck it in and turned it on, and some lights blinked,” Anaxis answered.
“And?” Maleira implored.
“And then nothing,” said Anaxis. “I tried it twice. Nothing happened.”
“Nothing at all, Anax?” Mills asked.
“Some lights turned on, and stayed on, but that’s about it,” Anaxis answered. “Oh, and there was a loud thud. Nothing more. That I could tell.”
“Well, that’s a good sign,” Maleira said, relieved.
“Howso?” Anaxis asked.
“It means that the power system is still operational,” Maleira explained. “If you managed to turn the power on, it is reasonable to assume that the ship’s communication core was activated. It runs at lower energy levels than the lights. It’s the pulse of the ship, if you will. If you truly got it sounding again, then there is hope that Alm will hear!”
“I’d like more than hope, I’d like proof,” said Anaxis.
“I wish there were a way to test it…” Maleira said, putting a finger to his lips in thought. “Actually, I may be able to detect the signal back at my place.”
“Can I get out of here now? Anaxis asked.
“Yeah, let’s get him out of there,” said Mills. “I’m getting tired of being underground.”
“Of course, of course,” said Maleira, shaking himself out of deep consideration. “Are you ready again?”
“How’s this going to work if you can’t toss me?” Anaxis asked.
“Take it leaning against the wall over there,” Maleira said, rolling a vial of the stuff through the gate. “And fall towards us. We’ll pull you out, and carry you the rest of the way. You’ll awake in the sunshine.”
“Alright,” Anaxis said. “Nothing will have changed, will it?”
“We’ll have to wait and see,” said Maleira.
Maleira and Mills carried Anaxis’s stiff body through the caves to where their raft was waiting for them at the edge of the river.
“How is he possibly so heavy?” Mills complained as he dropped his half of his friend’s body next to the raft.
“It’s dead weight,” Maleira said, setting his end of Anaxis down more gently.
“He’s dead?” Mills asked, choking on the words.
“No. Functionally,” Maleira said. “The center of gravity on a ‘dead’ body is wherever you hold it, as opposed to when a body is living, it supports where you are supporting it.”
“Oh,” said Mills. “Well that makes little sense.”
“What I mean to say…” Maleira began.
“No,” Mills interject. “I don’t need to know the specifics. I was just saying he’s really heavy. That’s all.”
“Ah,” said Maleira. “Well, I agree with you. Ready to get him onto the raft?”
“Let’s do it,” said Mills.
The two loaded Anaxis onto the raft and then ferried their way across the river.
“Now for the long haul,” Mills said. “You ready for this?”
“As ready as I will be,” said Maleira. “On three?”
“On three.”
The two grunted and growled as they lugged Anaxis’s body through the caves beneath Gnirean. They eventually reached the place where they had entered into the caves, many hours of hard toil later.
“How are we going to get back up?” Mills asked Maleira.
“Well,” Maleira said, “We’re going to have to seal this chamber, then flood it, then float up through the lake.”
“How are we going to seal the chamber?” Mills asked.
“I don’t know that we can make it completely water-tight,” Maleira said, “But we can do our best. We only need this room to fill with water, so that we can float up through the exit hatch. See anything that might block the hatch?”
Mills and Maleira searched around the musty space for anything that might work. There was a large metal panel just about the same size as the hatch leaning against the wall, though it didn’t match the shape of the hole very well.
“If we use some of that tubing, there,” Maleira said, pointing to the ceiling, “And some of our clothes, we might be able to create enough of a seal with that panel.”
“How much of our clothes are we going to have to use?” Mills asked.
“As much as we need, I’m afraid,” answered Maleira. “Go ahead and get down do your underwear.”
“What’s that?” asked Mills.
“What, underwear?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have a custom of wearing a set of changeable garments under your outerwear in Talx?”
“Why would you wear two sets of clothes?”
“Right,” Maleira said. He sighed. “Well, then, take off your shirt, anyways.”
Mills did so, and Maleira stripped down to the shorts he wore underneath his pants, shirt, and robe.
“Why do you wear so much?” Mills asked.
“I guess it’s just what I’ve always done,” Maleira said. “Plus, you don’t have to wash the outer garments as often, you just wash the ones underneath.”
“A swim takes care of any washing that needs to be done,” said Mills. “At least in Talx.”
“Let’s not discuss the efficacy of clothing right now, let’s get this seal as tight as we can.”
“You got it, Mal,” said Mills.
The two packed their clothes around the piece of siding they had found, then wrapped the tubing they tore from the ceiling around that. With a good deal of pushing and force, they lodged the siding in place, where it seemed to make a decent seal.
“That going to work?” Mills asked.
“We’re about to see. Are you a good swimmer?”
“Good enough.”
“Good enough to be in charge of Anaxis’s body? To make sure it gets up through the hole and to the surface?”
“Oh. No.”
“Alright then. I suppose it’s up to me.”
“Yup. And make sure I get up, too, okay?”
“I’ll do my best. Are you ready? Take the biggest breath you can, right up until the chamber fills with water. Go it?”
“Got it.”
“Alright. See you on the other side.”
Maleira took a minute to think about how to best take Anaxis along with him up through the lake, then nodded to Mills that the time had come. He unscrewed the portal on the ceiling of the small room they were in. Water started to pour down from above as he continued to unscrew. When he finished unscrewing the portal, it swung down hard under the pressure from the lake water above. The room filled up quickly with water and the three bodies rose with it. When there was hardly any air left, Maleira and Mills took huge breaths. Mills was the first out through the portal, then Maleira pushed Anaxis’s body up through it and the two living divers struggled with all their might to reach the top of the lake.
Mills popped up and realized it was raining, which was alarming at first, but then made him feel less worried about being discovered. Anaxis’s stiff body popped up next like a submerged stick, and then Maleira showed not long thereafter. Mills and Maleira together made sure Anaxis stayed afloat and upright as they swam to the edge of the lake.
“It’s freezing!” Mills said, shaking as he climbed out of the river onto the poured embankment.
“I agree,” said Maleira. “Let’s get something to wear, why don’t we?”
17
The rain had chased most of the citizens of Gnirean inside, and so Mills and Maleira didn’t look too peculiar running through the streets, half-clothed, carrying Anaxis’s body. It didn’t take them long to reach Maleira’s apartment building. They carried Anaxis up the stairs to the door of the unit, and set him down so that Maleira could punch in his access code.
“Now,” he said, “we just…”
He didn’t manage to get the last word out, as the door opened to reveal a group of people waiting in the apartment.
“Oh, no,” Maleira grumbled when he saw one of them step forward.
“I can’t believe you thought you’d get away with it,” the grave-faced woman said.
“Kalorna…” Maleira began.
“We don’t need to hear anything from you,” Kalorna said, pressing her face right into Maleira’s. “To think, all the trust we’ve put in you, all the work you’ve done for the city over the years. And now you’ve wasted it. Thrown it all away. And for what? We know you went underground. And you thought you knew the whole security system. Do you really think it would be designed so simplistically? That anyone could penetrate it so easily? That it wasn’t foreseen that someone with your level of access could abuse their power? Did you really think that you’d get away with it? What could you possibly sat that could justify your actions?”
“Who are these people, Mal?” Mills asked.
“Who are we?” Kalorna scoffed. “Who are you? I took a valorite reading through the door before you entered, and you aren’t even a citizen. What are you doing in our city?”
Before Mills could answer, another of the people inside Maleira’s apartment spoke up. “We’ve got no life reading on the third,” he said to Kalorna.
“What?” she asked incredulously. “What are you doing, Maleira? What are you thinking? Why are you in possession of a corpse?”
“It’s not a corpse,” Maleira said. “He’s not dead, he’s just suspended.”
“Why?” the woman demanded.
“…It was the only way to get to the mothership,” Maleira answered.
“The mothership?” the woman asked, stepping back in surprise.
“That’s right,” Maleira answered.
The six intruders to Maleira’s apartment looked to one another in shock.
“You… You went to the mothership?” one of them asked.
“I didn’t,” Maleira answered “And he didn’t,” he said of Mills. “But that one did.”
The look on Kalorna’s face went from shocked to furious.
“Oh, that’s beyond reprove, Maleira,” she said gravely. “It’ll be worse than Exile for you and your new friends here. This is high treason. You’ll be tried and executed.”
“We can only wait and see if it was worth it,” Maleira said in a soft voice.
“See what?” the woman asked. “There can be no positive outcome for your foolishness.”
“Perhaps,” Maleira said. “Or, perhaps, our plea to mother Alm will be heard, and they will come back and save us from this torment you call living.”
“Ah,” Kalorna said, stepping back with a small chuckle. “It’s clear now. How did we never catch it in any of our personality tests? Maleira believes in the saviors. He thinks there’s someone out there in the universe that’s going to come save him! From what, I’m not sure. What did you ever want for in life, Maleira? What wasn’t provided to you by Gnirean?”
“Freedom,” Maleira answered.
“Freedom is an illusion,” Kalorna snapped. “A concept as vague and useless as any other figment of a child’s imagination. We are destined to be exactly what we are. What happens is exactly what is destined to happen. There is no freedom. We can accept what is and strive to make the best of it, or we can struggle against it and pay the consequences. Like you ultimately have.”
“Believe whatever you want,” Maleira said. “But we’ve started the beacon. And they will return. And this way of life we’ve been forced to live under will change. You should only hope it happens in your lifetime. You have no idea what being alive really feels like.”
“Enough of this nonsense,” Kalorna said. “Take them into the cart waiting downstairs. Their trial will be swift and strong, as our arm of justice always is.”
“Is this really what you want to do with your life, Kalorna Rae?” Maleira asked the woman in charge, as he was shoved up against the wall for a pat-down by another of the arresting agents.
“I do what I must, what are my duties,” Kalorna answered. “As you did, until this notion of freedom supplanted your good sense. I suppose you got what you wanted in the end, though. You got to choose your fate. Pity it is death you have chosen. Suicide is so very weak.”
Maleira held his tongue as he, Mills, and the stiff body of Anaxis were transported down the hall, past the leering eyes of neighbors, then to the cart outside, which carried them away under the heavy rain and dark clouds.
“What’s going to happen?” Mills asked Maleira, as he watched the buildings going by out the window.
“I’m not sure, yet,” Maleira answered. “But we’re not done for. By the time Anaxis wakes back up, I’ll have a plan ready.”
“What sort of a plan?” Mills whispered.
“An escape,” Maleira answered. “I know this city better than almost anyone else. I know ways we can get out.”
“But the guards…”
“Don’t worry about them. They have no training for this sort of thing. My knowledge gives us a great advantage.”
“What are we going to do? Run?”
“Exactly,” Maleira said. “And, ultimately, we’re going to win. Just wait, for now. Because it’s all
we can do.”
When Anaxis awoke, he was in a jail cell with Maleira and Mills nearby.
“Where are we?” he mumbled, rolling the words around his mouth.
“We got caught,” Mills answered. “We’re in jail.”
“Oh, no,” Anaxis said. “How bad is it?”
“Well, they’re going to kill us,” answered Mills.
“I’d say that’s bad,” Anaxis said.
“They’re not going to kill us,” Maleira countered. “We’re going to escape.”
Anaxis looked around at the walls of the cell.
“How are we going to do that?” he asked.
“When we’re taken to execution,” Maleira answered. “We’re going to break free from the carriage.”
“You sure?” Anaxis asked him.
“I am sure,” Maleira answered. “Anyways, if we die trying to escape, we were going to die anyways, so, we might as well attempt to get away.”
“I love how practical you are about the situation,” Mills said.
“It’s only because I really believe we’ve got a good chance at escape,” said Maleira. “They’ve got no protocol for it, at all. They won’t expect it or know what to do.”
“And what are we going to do once we escape?” asked Anaxis.
“Run,” Maleira answered. “Quickly. I had years to learn the city’s ins and outs. We’ll make our way to the drone hangars and steal one.”
“You mean one of the flying machines?” Anaxis asked.
“That’s right,” Maleira answered.
“A Silver?” Mills asked.
“Do you know how to pilot them?” Anaxis asked.
“I have a vague idea,” Maleira answered. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Figure it out?” Mills asked. “We? What experience do you think the two of us have with ships? Anaxis only just mastered mirrors.”
“Any advanced technology is just sticks and stones in a very elaborate assemblage,” Maleira said.
“Really?” asked Anaxis.
“No, not really,” Maleira answered. “But we’ll figure it out. You two are clever.”
“How long have we been here, anyways?” asked Anaxis.
Legend of Alm -The Valor Saga Pt 1 - Falling Star Page 19
