Dove Alight

by Karen Bao

  I squeeze my sister’s shoulder, clear my throat, and tackle the subject in the most practical way I can. “Cygnus can have my old e-textbooks—they’re buried in my handscreen’s memory chip. Umbriel . . . You can give him my infrared glasses so he’ll always see people coming. And you can have my Lady of the Lab figurines, if they’re still intact. Remember how I never let you play with them?”

  “Yeah, but I’m too old now.”

  “Not too old for this.” I take the spare Lazy from my belt and press it into her hand. Anka’s jaw drops. Enabling her to defend herself with something more substantial than knives is one of the many reasons I needed to see her before we launch. “The switch on top turns the energy generation on, and the trigger fires it. Easy.”

  Anka’s slim, wide-knuckled fingers wrap around the grip and squeeze it hard. The weapon looks huge in her hand. “Beaters use these for burning people. For killing them. Umbriel said he’d never touch one. Would using this thing make me as bad as the Beaters are?”

  “It won’t be easy,” I say. “But I’d rather you live to hate yourself than die with a clean conscience.”

  She turns the gun over in her hands and then places it gingerly by her side. “I’ll . . . I’ll use it if anyone comes after me or Cygnus.”

  “One more thing. Keep calm, Anka. I won’t be here, so all of them”—I tip my head outward, gesturing at the Dovetailers—“may look to you.”

  Anka scoffs. “Keep calm? I’m not some kind of sage, like you are. I only know how to shout.”

  True. I remember my fears that Anka was Mom’s true heir—not me—because of her articulate speech, her anger, her power to move people. But as it turns out, we carried on Mom’s legacy, together. “That’s what Dovetail needs. In case I—”

  “Okay, that’s enough.” Anka holds up a hand. “Sorry I brought it up. I’ll cover for you if you die. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it a million times already, okay?”

  A head of messy black hair peeks out above the cot we’re sitting on. Cygnus has given up on trying to sleep. “Anka, you okay?” He strains to pull himself up.

  While Anka buries the Lazy underneath her blanket, I heave Cygnus onto our cot—all one-point-eight meters of him. Despite his impressive height, my fifteen-year-old brother weighs as much as a prepubescent child. I want to curl up around him to protect him, even though I know I won’t be able to stay forever.

  “I’m fine,” Anka lies. “We were . . . contingency planning. For if Phaet goes the same way as Mom tomorrow.”

  Cygnus flinches at her bluntness and turns to me. “If this’ll be the last time we see you, then let’s talk about something else. Something happier.”

  “This won’t be the last time.” I take my brother’s hand, hold it tight to my heart. I drop a kiss on Anka’s forehead and sling my other arm around her shoulder. “I miss Mom, but I’m not ready to join her yet.” With my brother and sister in my arms, I’m at home in this dim, yellow-lit bunker, and I’m happy. Happier than anyone should be. “You both give me something to come back to.”

  I SPLASH COLD BASIN WATER ONTO MY FACE. Sleep eluded me until early this morning; finally, I snuck out of bed while my siblings slept, to get ready in the bunker’s empty unisex public restroom. When I was still a star Primary pupil, I arrived to morning class ten minutes early every day without fail. Why shouldn’t I be punctual to battle too?

  I’ve put on my uniform with the hidden mirrors, but I haven’t yet picked out weapons or fixed my hair. A pile of my gear sits atop a teetering black plastic bench at the end of the row of washbasins. Unlike the rest of the bunker, the restroom’s concrete walls have been painted a glaring shade of white in a futile attempt to bring some brightness underground. Beneath the flickering yellow lights, my skin looks greenish; in the cracked mirror, even my loose black-and-silver hair hangs limp and dull.

  Look alive, Girl Sage, I tell myself. How do you expect people to follow a ghost? Though appearing alert is surely a lost cause, I hop up and down to get my blood flowing.

  The primitive hinged door creaks open. Every muscle of mine tenses. It’s someone who needs to use the toilet, I tell myself. Drying my face on my stretchy black shirt, I stand up straight and look behind me.

  Wes walks my way, already dressed in full combat attire—typical. He’s even more punctual than me. He turns his helmet over in his hands as he approaches. When he gets closer, I notice the bruise-like imprints under his sleepy eyes.

  Is something wrong? Sudden worry kicks me harder than caffeine ever could.

  “Morning,” he says, wrapping me in his arms. Entwined, we step farther into the walled-off restroom. The door swings shut.

  “What’s happening?” I touch his upper back before I can stop myself. “Did I miss anything important?”

  “Besides me?” He cracks a tired smile.

  I grimace, embarrassed that I can’t even greet him sans stress. One of his hands riffles through the tangles in my hair. I lean inward, settling into him. Into the quiet contentment I haven’t felt since that night on Battery Bay.

  “I knew you’d be up.” Wes pulls back to get a good look at me. I don’t quake under his gaze like I used to. Whatever I look like, whatever I am, is enough. “Up and possibly upset.”

  “Who wouldn’t be, after yesterday?” I say. “Now we’re about to tear up more people and places. Part of me doesn’t want to find out how this’ll play out. But I want you next to me when it ends.”

  Wes grimaces. “I won’t go rogue again, like I did in the tunnel. I’ll stay, for you and the people we both care about.”

  “Even if Lazarus appears?” I say to make sure.

  Wes exhales for a long time, as if trying to expel the anger from his body. “If I fight him, I fight him with you.”

  I nod, torn between crushing him in a hug and leaving him the space to reconcile his grief and anger with his responsibility toward me.

  Wes looks at the assortment of weapons spread out on the bench, sparing me from making a decision. “I’ll help get those ready for you.”

  Wes sits, while I step in front of the mirror and start wrestling my hair, thinner and grayer than ever, into a braid. It’s hopelessly tangled from my tossing and turning last night, and I don’t have a comb. My face twists into a scowl, but then I laugh out loud. What serious soldier worries about her hair before a battle? A strange sensation of reassurance overtakes me. The Committee hasn’t changed me completely; the neat, detail-oriented part of me remains.

  Looking in the mirror, I watch Wes’s reflection peer down the barrel of a Downer gun; he takes a silicone cloth from his pocket and wipes away specks of dirt. His movements hypnotize me—the shifting of his forearm muscles as they hold up the weapon, the valleys that form between the tendons on the backs of his hands when his fingers contract. When he finishes polishing and loading the gun, he puts it down and starts sanding one of my favorite daggers. It has a twenty-two-centimeter blade, straight and symmetrical, ideal for close combat and throwing.

  I finish braiding my hair and tie it off with the same elastic I’ve used for months. “You’re a lifesaver, literally,” I say. “Remember the Militia instructors saying that your equipment is all that stands between you and your enemies? Well, I put off doing a proper checkup last night. Procrastination at its finest.”

  He stands, holding the dagger in one hand, and crosses the floor to stand behind me. “They also said to trust no one else with your stash.” He’s close enough to rest the side of his head against mine.

  My pulse picks up and my leg muscles tense, even though I know he’d never hurt me. Why do we react to fear and excitement in the same way?

  “Those are all Militia fibs.” I watch my lips move in the mirror. “I’ve trusted you with more important things.”

  I whirl around a hundred and eighty degrees as Wes raises the dagger. He holds it so that the fl
at of the blade rests on my mouth. His hand stays steady—the mark of an expert fighter—but the rest of him trembles.

  One centimeter at a time, I lean forward, and the dagger drops away. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I kiss him hard; I tangle my fingers in his petal-soft hair, feeling the small swells on the surface of his skull. Everything that makes him him is right underneath my hands. My heart thuds faster and faster, as if I’m sprinting—alive, alive, alive, it seems to say. But for once, I feel like I’m running toward something, instead of away.

  “We’re being absurd,” he whispers, sheathing the dagger. “We’ve both lost people we love . . . we know how that feels.”

  I put a finger on his lips. “And we haven’t tried to stop caring for each other.”

  “We’ve done the complete opposite. But that’s all right by me.” He kisses each knuckle on my hand, and his touch fills me with so much emotion that I feel like I could burst.

  When he looks in my eyes again, his face is serious and his mouth tight, filled with unspoken words.

  “Since my sister died, I’ve thought about how nothing she did seemed rational—taking the lamp-lighting job when she could hardly walk straight, deciding to marry Lazarus when she knew that he was such a resentful person. But now she makes more sense to me. She did whatever she thought would make her happy. That’s how she got the most out of her twenty-three years on Earth.”

  Finally, he’s mentioned Murray. I have to pick my words carefully.

  “You see what was best in her,” I say. “That takes real love.”

  Wes nods, but there’s a grimace on his face. “I didn’t spend enough time with her while she lived,” he says, letting go of me. “That’s the last thing I want to happen with you. So—cheers to our absurdity, Phaet.”

  He finishes with the subtle smile that never gets old. Silently, we gather our things. I coil my braid into a bun and clip it in place, and then we exit the gloomy restroom, our arms around each other, and start climbing the stairs out of the bunker.

  We might not return to that place. But at least we’ve left one happy memory there, even if no one will ever see its light.

  * * *

  Wes and I march down the Dugout’s widest hallway, palms pressed together and fingers clasped. It’s our secret, the only thing that keeps me from feeling like I’m walking to my execution. We’re in a dense pocket of Dovetail pilots; behind us march the ragtag foot soldiers, our passengers. About half have broken out tattered Militia uniforms from years past. Others wear the teal Batterer getup or civilian robes with extra pockets sewn in.

  I imagine Umbriel guarding a staircase that leads down to the bunker, dressed all in Phi green, too-wide utility belt hanging off his hips. Will he muster up the strength to hurt, to kill if he must? Or would he rather be a victim?

  Dovetail and our much larger cohort of Earthbound allies have agreed on a two-pronged attack. Dovetail forces will swoop in from above, beat back the Committee spacecraft, and fly into Base I Defense with the help of our undercover agents already stationed there, who’ll open the hangar doors for us. We’ll clear out Defense for the brunt of the attack, which will come from the Batterer soldiers, racing downhill in their rovers from the peaks of eternal light and straight into Base I under the cover of the eclipse.

  A narrower, darker tunnel splits off from the Dugout’s main hallway. From here, a straight path leads to Defense. Although we’ve patched up the vacuum seal, there’s the same crumbling concrete, the black-and-white paint peeling off the walls’ Lunar flag motifs. The sad box of a space is too small for the Batterers’ many antiquated ships and Dovetail’s few modern ones. To transport everyone, Dovetail will fill our three Omnibuses and one beat-up Colossus to full capacity.

  This time, leadership has assigned me to pilot a Destroyer, the model with which I’m most comfortable, and take along a handpicked team of four. Asterion’s daughter, Chitra, climbs into the flight overseer’s seat, closest to the ship’s rear. Despite her family’s tragic history with spaceflight, she has proved a competent, careful crewmember in training drills. Nash and Alex take the wing weapons. Wes sits copilot, and I take the controls. My fingers are numb, as if anxiety has drained all the blood out of them.

  “Put that frown away, Dove Girl,” Alex drawls, checking my reflection in the windshield. “It’s not healthy for us to see.”

  “What he means,” Nash says, “is that if you’re losing your grit, Stripes, then we have no chance.”

  Chitra’s big brown eyes widen in apprehension, and I suspect she’s remembering her sister. How has her father reconciled Vinasa’s death with sending his only remaining daughter on Dovetail’s most hazardous mission yet? Well . . . Chitra is doing what’s expected of her.

  “Phaet, remember the third Militia evaluation?” Wes asks, and I look away from Chitra’s face. His eyes gleam. Steel, I think. That’s how strong I’ve become. “Fly like you did then. Like I know you can.”

  That was two years ago, I think. My first time off Base IV. Wes and I have accomplished so much together since then, cheated death across the Earth and Moon. If people could serve as good luck charms—if I believed in good luck charms—he’d be mine. I’d tell him now, if there weren’t three other people listening.

  I pull us into the airlock, telling myself that nothing can take my life as long as he’s guarding it.

  * * *

  “Watch out!” Yinha says into our headsets. “Enemy engaged.”

  Far ahead of us, her ship, Pygmette R88, executes a flawless barrel roll to dodge loyalist missiles. Less than four minutes after Dovetail’s launch, the Militia has sent up its own fighter ships. Dozens of spacecraft dart above Base I; we distinguish friend from foe by the red stripes painted on the Dovetail vehicles. Base I’s hemi-polyhedral structures, swathed in darkness, seem all too far away. But our easy visibility won’t last long. Moment by moment, the Moon is slipping into Earth’s shadow.

  “The Committee sent ships up quickly,” Alex mutters. “Too quickly.”

  I steer our Destroyer behind a Dovetail Omnibus, using the larger ship to shield us from lasers and projectiles. Beside me, Wes fine-tunes our movements, glancing nervously at the peaks of eternal light. Only their tips are still sunlit. As soon as the eclipse reaches totality, the Batterers will descend upon Base I. And they’ll do it whether we’ve breached Defense yet or not.

  A missile meets the Omnibus’ left wing, and the craft swerves, knocked off balance by the damage. It retreats higher above Base I. I’m counting on the hull’s self-repair mechanism to fix enough of the damage to get the craft back on track.

  “Watch out for more slugs,” Yinha says, referring to the missiles. “The enemy’s sent up another fleet of Destroyers.”

  “We’re going upstairs to regroup,” I say, and fire our thrusters downward.

  “Got you covered,” Yinha says.

  Our Destroyer swoops up. Here, several satellites continue in their irregular path around the Moon. Committee ships bathe in our exhaust.

  When we reach five thousand meters, I stop our ascent and look down upon a dark, dark landscape. Not a single peak of eternal light is lit by the sun.

  We’re running out of time.

  “Batterer rovers beginning descent now,” Rose says in our headsets. She’s in the Dugout, keeping track of the invasion’s many arms.

  Hearing her voice makes my heart thud, driving home the stakes of our mission: we can’t fail Dovetail, can’t fail the thousands of Batterer soldiers who’ll be discovered by the Committee and destroyed out here if we don’t open up Base I Defense for them.

  “I’m not getting anything from our people in Base I Defense,” Rose continues, and the stress I’m trying to suppress rises to a fever pitch. “The Committee must’ve . . . must’ve found them and . . . removed them.”

  No! It’s bad enough that we lost Dovetailers, and even worse tha
t they were ones so central to our plan. They can’t clear the way for us, and now we’ll fail to do so for the Batterers, who are picking their way down from the peaks of eternal light.

  “We’ll have to get into the base some other way,” says Nash, gripping the right wing weapons controls.

  “Hold on,” Rose says, “we’re trying to hack the hangar control switches . . .”

  Trying isn’t enough. If Rose’s team can’t open the hangar, we’ll all be stuck out here. The attack will be a failure. Fragments of plans bounce around in my mind, none of them coherent enough to work.

  “Watch out, Dove Girl!” Alex says. “Satellite coming up at a hundred seventy-five degrees—”

  I see the dilapidated thing, a hexagonal prism with two solar-paneled rectangular wings sticking out the sides, whip through the loyalist crafts that have followed us, scattering them. It careens toward us from behind, and I swerve out of the way.

  Then, impulsively, I twist the ship around to follow the satellite. I remember it from my studies—it’s a twenty-third-century remote sensing craft called the Lunar Remote Imager, or LRI. Five hundred kilograms of metals and polymers that drifted into irregular lunar orbit over decades of disturbances. Neither side has touched the dead satellite; it was too volatile to use for weapons storage or landscape mapping.

  The Committee turned the ISS into a weapon. Why shouldn’t we do the same with the LRI? I look from the satellite to Wes, and he nods.

  “Let’s feed the Committee their own medicine,” he says.

  “Sage, please, have you thought this through?” Chitra asks in a tiny voice.

  “Not much time for thinking,” I say. “Nash and Alex, get out the carbon fiber net. Yinha, you free?”

  “Yep.”

  “Prepare to perform a magnetic latch.” I push the throttle, and our ship accelerates, closing the distance between us and the LRI. “Let’s snag this thing.”