Dove Alight

by Karen Bao

  I look upward, scoping out weak spots in the rock ceiling above, and give the order I know I must give. “You heard the Batterer officer,” I shout. “Retreat!”

  An explosion from the tunnel’s center rocks the ground beneath our feet. Because there’s a vacuum outside our suits, we don’t hear a thing, but we can see cracks tens of meters long tearing through the ceiling. The upper tram tracks twist and snap, pulled apart by the impact.

  On the ground, the Pacifians turn tail and scramble toward Base I. Lazarus’s unit, which was giving us so much trouble a minute ago, retreats, letting Ariel break free and run toward me. But as they go, the Pacifians grab three, four, five retreating Dovetail and Batterer soldiers from other units that try to flee past them and toward the Dugout.

  I run, followed immediately by Wes and Alex. Umbriel and Ariel, who lack the agility of veteran soldiers, struggle to keep up. Yinha’s voice booms in my helmet, that fragile safe space around my head. “Committee forces are sealing off the tunnel by bombing it from above. Coordinates eighty-five degrees and forty-two minutes north, sixty-eight degrees and thirteen to fifteen minutes west are bad, bad places to be.”

  The tunnel is rumbling, crumbling, closing in on itself. As if the landscape, the Moon’s molten core, is hungry for bodies. Dovetail, Batterer, Pacifian—it doesn’t matter. The Committee would rather destroy this territory than see someone else take it. They would bury their own allies to accomplish that.

  Panicking, I leap over boulders and crevices, driven now by a terrifying rush of self-preservation. My remaining teammates’ footfalls, sounding behind me, offer reassurance . . . until those four sets of footsteps become three.

  “Phaet! Phaet, please!” A voice screams in my headset. “Umbriel—someone!”

  Twisting back, I see that a lone Pacifian among the Dovetailer and Batterer swarm has grabbed Ariel’s utility belt and bent his reedy body into a headlock.

  “Ariel!” Umbriel slows, looking over his shoulder to try to find his brother.

  “Keep going!” Alex shouts, yanking Umbriel back on course. “We need to get inside now!”

  Ariel may be Umbriel’s brother, but he’s my soldier. I break off from my teammates, run to Ariel, and swipe at his assailant with a dagger—but not before the Pacifian soldier slams a rifle butt into my visor with his free hand. The force of it wrenches my head back, and pain spikes through my entire upper body. Still, I manage to glimpse my opponent’s face through his helmet—Lazarus.

  I shake off the blow. Cracks have appeared in the polymer of my visor. My hands instinctively reach up to protect my face. It’s a matter of time before the pressure differential between my aerated helmet and the vacuum outside builds to an impossible level. If he scores another hit . . .

  Hit. Putting my weight on my hands, I kick both feet back into Lazarus’s groin. Due to the low-gravity environment, he goes flying backward, and the force propels me forward. I land on my feet—but it’s no good: he’s still got Ariel by the neck.

  Behind him, more chunks of rock tumble from the ceiling. Slinging Ariel over his shoulder, Lazarus turns on his propulsion pack and speeds into the midst of the debris.

  “Come on, Phaet!” Alex’s voice shouts in my ear.

  Hating every movement I make, I half run, half stumble to the airlock. Dovetail has decreased the opening’s diameter, making it just wide enough to crawl through.

  Wes’s hands are the first ones I reach for. Countless other pairs pull me farther inside, lift up my cracked helmet, clap me on the shoulder.

  Umbriel’s are not among them. He stares at the tunnel, into which the brother he’s shared his entire life with has disappeared.

  “WHAT THE FUSE DID YOU THINK YOU WERE doing?”

  Still wide-eyed from shock, Umbriel hounds Wes through Medical’s cramped lobby, spewing hot fury. His fist is tight around the handle of an emergency kit; none of us have changed out of our filthy uniforms, though Wes has thrown a white coat and gloves over his.

  “Not to make excuses,” Wes mutters, “but you could’ve been a tad more helpful back there.” He’s right—Umbriel’s pacifism, and then his paralysis upon seeing so much gore, rendered him a liability rather than a contributing team member. I just don’t have the heart to argue with him.

  “It was my second real battle!” Umbriel roars at Wes. “And besides, I never wanted to kill. Or to see that many people get killed. I’m not an Earthbound war machine like you.”

  Alex and I look at each other worriedly, eyes meeting over the body of the unconscious soldier we’re carrying. More teams of two hustle through the lobby’s doors, carrying other wounded soldiers—their skin bloody, blistered, or both. We’ve run out of stretchers. I try not to gag on the metallic scent of blood, which permeates every corner.

  “You led us straight to that sociopathic killer.” Umbriel’s practically breathing down Wes’s neck.

  “And now Lazarus can gain some of the Committee’s favor back,” I say. That’s probably why he took Ariel—he probably needs to repair his reputation with his protectors after losing Wes and me on Battery Bay.

  “How did you find him, mate?” Alex says to Wes. “And how did we not know?”

  I shake my head, torn between sympathy for Wes’s grief—I understand his need to avenge Murray—and anger at his recklessness.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Wes can’t meet any of our eyes.

  “You’re right. It doesn’t,” Umbriel says. “What happened happened all the same. My brother kept your blasted head on your neck and got captured. After that, who knows? Smashed by a falling rock? Killed by the Committee? Questioned in an electric chair?”

  Ariel wasn’t the only one. Within a few hours, we’ll get official tallies of the wounded, dead, and captured. More than I dread seeing the numbers, I dread the expressions on people’s faces when they hear the names.

  Umbriel sets the emergency kit on the blood-smeared floor, almost slamming it down. “What’ll I tell my dad? Actually, no—you should tell him. Can you even look him in the face?”

  Alex and I lay our burden down on a towel on the floor. It’ll serve as our wounded soldier’s cot for now. I say nothing to stop Umbriel’s tirade. Wes deserves it.

  “Umbriel, you’re creating a hostile environment for the patients,” Wes says. Face frozen in concentration, Wes kneels by our soldier, a middle-aged female Dovetailer with multiple bullet holes in her leg. She’s slipping in and out of consciousness.

  Umbriel lowers his voice to a harsh whisper. “You think patching people up in here can make up for what you did out there?”

  Ignoring him, Wes slices off the patient’s pant leg to the upper thigh and props her foot on his lap. “Alex, tourniquet?”

  Alex shoves the device in Wes’s face as if punching him. The tourniquet is a polymer cuff connected by plastic tubing to a small hand pump. “Umbriel, I’m so upset about what happened—hell, Ariel’s a bit like a brother to me too—but Wes’s sister . . .”

  Umbriel silences him with a glare.

  Wes wraps the tourniquet’s cuff around the woman’s thigh and inflates it by pumping air through the tube, increasing the pressure on her wound to try to stop the bleeding. I sit by her head, murmuring to her to give her something to focus on, trying to keep her conscious.

  “Your sister’s dead, Wes,” Umbriel says. “Running after her killer wasn’t going to change anything—except maybe send my brother right after her.”

  Wes lifts his head slowly, staring at Umbriel, wrapping up his work on the injured woman. At first, his eyes blaze with anger, but then he lowers them, face filling with sorrow.

  “I’m sorry, Umbriel. I could say it a dozen times and it wouldn’t be enough. I’m sorry about your brother. I’m sorry that you didn’t want to fight. I’m sorry Lazarus didn’t get what he deserved. I’m sorry I was selfish and an idiot. But I didn’t intend for any of
that—or any of this—to happen.” Wes gestures to the wounded and dying all around us. “The butchers on the other end of that collapsed tunnel can’t say the same.”

  He starts walking to the next patient, and Alex follows, leaving me alone with Umbriel. My best friend turns to me, looking deflated. Vulnerability is replacing the anger in his eyes. “I should’ve tried harder to save Ariel. I ran away, Phaet.” Tears leak from his eyes. “I failed my family. And I can’t fix it.”

  His words remind me of how I felt after Mom’s death, after Cygnus’s capture. Self-loathing and regret are no more productive than anger. I hug him, wishing my arms could squeeze the poisonous emotions out of his body.

  I STAY IN THE PHIS’ BORROWED LIVING ROOM that night, knowing better than to leave Umbriel alone. Ariel’s absence haunts the space: his frayed green backpack and scuffed walking shoes sit on the plastic couch where their owner should be. Atlas has gone to a separate room to sleep; every few seconds, we hear coarse cotton sheets rustling as he tosses and turns.

  Unlike us, other uninjured Dovetailers have returned to daily life. Civilians have come up from the bunker, most of them shaken but not broken by the Committee’s attack.

  The broken ones have lost family and friends to death or injury, and trying to put even one heart back together takes patience. Umbriel and I have rehashed every explanation for why Wes went rogue, and every way we could have stopped him. Everything that could’ve happened to Ariel, and every question about when we’ll hear news of him. Having polluted the air with our worry and anger, we sit blankly, listening to the puttering of the air filters and the faint buzz of the flickering orange bulbs.

  When the door light blinks green in the middle of the night, we catch each other’s eyes, dreading what could be on the other side.

  I open the doors with my thumbprint to find Rose hovering in the hallway, the skin around her eyes pink and swollen. Tears glue her snowy lashes together.

  “It’s my fault,” she blurts, taking my hand and holding on tight.

  Bewildered, I pull Rose inside the apartment, hoverchair and all, so that Umbriel can help me make sense of what she’s saying. How could she be responsible for anything that happened in the tunnel? She didn’t even enter that death trap.

  “Ariel,” Rose murmurs, wiping her eyes. I grab a rag from the kitchen counter and hand it to her. “It shouldn’t have happened. It couldn’t have, if not for me.”

  “Go on,” I say.

  “S-soon after you all touched down on base, Wes met with me. Privately. He told me about a man, a rogue soldier who nursed a— a vendetta against him.”

  “Lazarus,” Umbriel mutters through his teeth.

  Rose nods. “Wes told me he feared for his life. He begged me for everything I knew about the Committee’s plans concerning this Lazarus person—oh, Phaet, he seemed so frightened, he was almost crying. He needed to avoid Lazarus in battle, but he didn’t want you, his commanding officer—or anyone else, for that matter—to think he was a coward. So he pressed me until I promised him confidentiality.”

  One by one, the pieces fall into place. Each click in my mind makes it harder to breathe.

  “He tricked you, Rose,” Umbriel says.

  “I tried to help,” Rose continues. “I kept his secret. Our team never learned about the exact timing of the Committee’s assaults, but we found documents delineating the Pacifian chain of command. Searches for Lazarus, Penny, or his Lunar name turned up nothing. But I found out that regardless of the timing or location of an attack, a skilled bounty hunter was slated for the front lines, among a contingent of Pacifians with propulsion packs. It sounded like Lazarus, so I told Wes.”

  “That’s why Wes led us toward the troops with the packs,” I say.

  “He was supposed to run from Lazarus, not try to kill him or . . . or . . .” Rose’s fist shakes around her hoverchair’s joystick, and the entire contraption shivers in midair. Sighing, Umbriel pries her fingers loose so that she can float steadily once more.

  “Don’t blame yourself for what happened to Ariel, Rose.” I think back to the first months of my friendship with Wes, when he’d convinced me he was from Base I. The possibility that he was Earthbound didn’t even cross my mind. “Wes is an excellent liar.”

  Rose stares at me, seeming to study every movement in my face. “You sound like a girl who’s suffered because of him.”

  “I’m a girl who’d be dead without him.” I remember the falsehoods he told to get me into Saint Oda and Battery Bay, remember the pinch of his lips after he was done. He did it because my life—and his too—was more important to him than upholding the truth.

  “Say what you want to defend him, Phaet,” Umbriel huffs. “But he’s an uptight one-man death factory.”

  This is the first time Wes’s lies have hurt someone close to me. I shouldn’t forgive him. But part of me considers everything separating us unimportant.

  “His comrades can’t trust him with their heads,” Umbriel says. “How can you trust him with your heart?”

  I sink down onto a kitchen stool. Rose coasts over so that she sits beside me; she seems to know that her nearness alone is a comfort.

  “I’m not jealous of him, Phaet. Not anymore.” Umbriel doesn’t seem to care that a near stranger is listening. He keeps hitting me with difficult truths. And unlike in training, I can’t dodge these blows. “I just want the best for you—and that doesn’t include liars like him.”

  * * *

  They’ve put Wes under house arrest for insubordination, only letting him leave to complete his shifts in Medical. In the days since I’ve seen him, he’s scrubbed his and Alex’s apartment spotless; the copper furniture gleams under the orange lights.

  Alex is away, on nighttime guard duty. I rap my knuckles on Wes’s bedroom door, knowing he’s awake: light leaks out around the edges. “Rose came by earlier tonight,” I call.

  Wes opens the door then, blinking at me. Half of his hair lies flat against his scalp, and he’s rubbing his eyes.

  “I was milliseconds away from a good nap, Phaet.” The words are slurred. Through the doorway, I see his crumpled white sheets, the messiest things in the tiny, immaculate room. A sheathed dagger rests on the floor next to the bed.

  “The lights were on.” I don’t apologize for waking him. Umbriel, Atlas, and my siblings probably won’t sleep tonight either.

  “I can’t fall asleep when it’s dark,” he says. “The shadows take on bizarre shapes. Alex gives me his electricity ration just so I can keep my wits about me.” He sits on the bed and pats the spot next to him. “What’s going on? Come in.”

  I remain standing. Although I want to comfort him, I can’t let him off so easily.

  “You went after the most dangerous fighter the Committee has,” I say. “With four new recruits in tow. Two are dead, and Ariel’s in enemy hands. Why, Wes? Was revenge that important to you?”

  I regret the question as soon as it leaves my mouth. Wes runs a hand through his hair, and I notice broken skin over his knuckles. What’s he been punching? Glass?

  “Murray would’ve wanted it,” he says halfheartedly.

  I shake my head. We both know better.

  “No, you’re right.” Wes’s eyes grow unfocused, as if he’s looking at some place far away. “What am I becoming, Phaet? I went after that butcher not knowing what I’d do to him. Only that I’d make him suffer—that I’d hurt him. Torture him. I’ve never wanted to do that before.”

  Although I’ve felt the same violent impulse, I’ve never acted on it. Not like Wes. “How do you feel, knowing that you’ve changed?”

  Wes’s expression is pleading. “Afraid. Since . . . Murray, the one thing I thought I could control—myself—has disobeyed me. Am I like him now?”

  “You haven’t fallen that far yet.” Although I doubt my own words, I say them as if, by doing so, they’ll become
true.

  Wes shakes his head. “We both know that I’ve stepped off that ledge. You’re looking at me differently, Phaet.”

  Slowly, I sit next to him on the hard mattress. He doesn’t reach for me. There are some things a hug can’t fix. He’ll have to redeem himself in my eyes. In Umbriel’s, and in Dovetail’s too. But he won’t get a chance unless we undo as much damage as possible. Although he’s falling, he hasn’t yet hit the ground.

  “Keep your eyes open, Wes,” I whisper. “I’ll throw you a rope.”

  THE NEXT DAY, MY BODY’S IN THE DARK INFOTECH control room with the leadership, tallying our losses from the tunnel and scouting new strategies. My mind is in an even darker place, imagining what’s happened to Ariel and the other fifteen soldiers listed as missing. Seventy-nine troops have been killed and a hundred sixty-eight wounded, most of them Dovetail. As awful as their fates are, at least we know for sure what’s happened to them.

  “How do you think the Pacifian commander reacted to the Committee using his soldiers and then killing them?” Asterion says.

  Costa puffs out his chest. The watery “hair” on his head swirls in violent eddies. “Commander Jang is a typical play-by-the-rules Pacifian. Sticks to his word—in this case, that’s being the Committee’s puppet—even when someone personally offends him.”

  His voice is full of disdain, a product of decades of diplomatic struggles with the Pacifians.

  “Ms. Rose, how broad is our monitoring of Jang’s communications with the Committee and the General?” Asterion asks.

  “We’ve bugged the external handscreen they gave him as well as the HeRP he was assigned,” Rose says, scrolling through the computer in front of her. “The Committee only sends him directives—it’s pretty much one-way communication.”

  Yinha scoffs. “Which is to say, exactly what Rose expected.”

  “Jang might suspect we’re watching him,” I say. “We know the Committee’s hackers have accessed some of our communications. We just don’t know which ones.”