Stars Beneath My Feet

by D L Frizzell

  “Ho, Sergeant,” I replied in as friendly a voice as I could muster. Might as well get a few answers now, I told myself. “You looking for trouble?” I asked, gesturing toward the vehicles.

  “Ah, don’t worry ‘bout all this,” he replied, talking as if I hadn’t left Celestial City without a word last year. “Just one big circus as far as I’m concerned.”

  That wasn’t an answer. “You might have too many clowns,” I said.

  “Agreed,” he laughed. “We’re short on daredevils, though.”

  “Funny man,” I said.

  “I mean,” he whispered, “what are you doing these days?”

  I’ve been told many times that I lack empathy, sympathy, and don’t respond well to social cues. Because of this, I sometime miss hints that are thrown my way. In this case I recognized that Brady was referring to me, but didn’t understand what he was getting at. “Manhunt,” I said. “Stopped here for a new horse. Why?”

  He looked around, then leaned close to me. “You notice I got a promotion?” He tapped the stripes on his sleeve.

  “You’re a senior sergeant, now,” I said. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” he said, his tone changing grim. “Got it six months ago. The colonel really pulled for me, too. He said I was ready to do some really important work, stuff that made the world a better place.”

  I was glad for Brady, but not that interested. “Okay.”

  “So many responsibilities now,” he continued. “Yup, the world needs men who will step up to do their part.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The world needs you. Can’t wait to see what happens.”

  “There’s always room for qualified people,” he added. After a long pause, he added impatiently, “You’re a qualified person, right Alex?”

  Oh, now I got it. “I’ll stop by the garrison to see Colonel Seneca the next time I pass through Celestial City,” I said, doubting I’d ever step foot through those city gates again. Come to think of it, I might need to avoid Dogleg in the future as well. I’d skirted the city wall when I passed through last month and didn’t talk to a single soul along the way.

  Brady, seeming to read my thoughts, put on an ill-fitting smile. “Well, it’s good to see you anyway, Alex. Listen, if you’re lookin’ for a horse, the stables are that way.” He pointed down the road.

  “I know,” I nodded. “Been here before. Thanks.”

  “Find the major at the barn before you leave. I’m sure she’ll want to see you.”

  “I will,” I told him. I won’t, I told myself. That maddening feeling of guilt struck me again. I should have told him about the T’Neth killing those innocent caravaners. No, I decided. They look like they’re already prepared for anything. They’ll be fine.

  I decided the whole arrangement to get answers in exchange for a horse wasn’t worth it. With luck, the stableman would have something I could buy outright and just leave town. I shook Brady’s hand, and he crushed mine like he always did. He stared into my eyes with the utmost seriousness as he held the grip an extra second.

  “Go see the major,” he reiterated.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I should have been suspicious that Brady was so helpful in directing me to the stables. I got there and found another old friend, Sergeant Derrick Traore, brushing down a horse. Correction, he was a senior sergeant now, just like Brady. There was no way I’d get a horse without him seeing me, so I decided to make the first move. If a stableman showed up I could excuse myself and get out. “Looks like you and Halfway are on the same promotion track,” I said.

  Traore stared at me in disbelief for a second, and then smiled. “Yep,” he said. He put down the brush, slapped my shoulder and squeezed it. “I saved you a piece of cake from the ceremony.”

  “Wasn’t that six months ago?” I asked.

  “I’m not sayin’ it’ll taste good,” he laughed. “But it’s yours if you want it.”

  “Pass,” I said. “Listen, I wrecked my aerobike a couple weeks ago. Mister Hawkins was going to help me get a horse.”

  “Haven’t seen him,” Traore said. “I bet you got hit with the same magnetic spike that hit us. Good thing we shut our vehicles down. At least they got through it unscathed.”

  “What else would get damaged by magnetism?” I asked. Dammit, my curiosity kicked in too fast sometimes. I reminded myself to keep my mouth shut from that point on.

  Traore flinched, one of his telltale giveaways that he said something he shouldn’t have. “Nothing, of course,” Traore said. “What else is there to damage out here? Horses? Nope, nothing to see here. Nothing at all.”

  “I get it,” I said, irritated at the continued hints that didn’t make a damn bit of sense. “You’re here for a reason, but you can’t tell me.”

  “Wish I could,” Traore said, and picked up the horse brush again. “Thing about being a senior sergeant is – I know more but can tell less. I hate that.”

  Where’s the stableman when you need him, anyway? I thought. “I’m trying to get to Bogfield,” I said, implementing my exit strategy. Luckily, I was becoming desensitized to the guilt.

  “Not sure I have any spare nose plugs, Alex, but I’m sure Major Hathan-Fen could help.”

  “Hathan-Fen’s a major now?”

  “Yeah, she’s in the barn,” Traore said. “She’ll want to see you.”

  “I doubt that.” She hated my guts, and her feelings probably only got worse over the last year. Brady knew it. Traore knew it. They probably hated me, too, but weren’t saying it.

  “Wouldn’t you like to hear her beg you to come back?” he asked.

  “Only if I get to say no,” I said.

  “Wise-ass,” he grinned. “Go talk to her.”

  I had to admit that I missed the two sergeants. Traore and Brady taught me some valuable skills back when I was a fresh deputy, showing me from their great experience how to fire weapons and handle blades. I smiled as I remembered that it took me very little time to get better than they were at their respective specialties. The bag of coins I won from them during a friendly shooting contest still sat in my box of things at my apartment, gathering dust in a back closet. My smile faded as quickly as it appeared. The good rapport didn’t matter a year ago, so it probably wouldn’t matter now. Still, if Brady and Traore thought this was important, I should probably visit the major.

  This better be worth it, I thought.

  Once in the barn’s cargo bay again, I took another look around as I took the ramp leading upstairs. The old landing craft was in pristine condition. None of its titanium structure had been stripped. The computerized electronics were also intact, other than being non-functional and smeared with cow shit.

  That red epoxy covered more of the ship’s interior bulkheads than I had guessed. Every exposed surface, every hatch, and every pane of glass had been laminated with a thick layer of the stuff. I’d asked Hawkins about it on a previous visit to Dogleg, and he had answered that nobody knew for sure what the epoxy was for, but that the Founders were afraid of something inside the vessel. He told me a legend that the crew had been infected by some sort of plague while still in orbit, so they sealed themselves inside the landing craft to prevent a pandemic. The passengers rode to the surface in the cargo bay with the animals and were warned never to breach the shell encasing the rest of the ship. After landing, the thrusters and intakes were coated with epoxy as an additional precaution. In the generations since, the story grew into a tale about pestilent spirits who still wandered the ship, sealed forever behind the red barrier.

  I figured the ship’s crew was probably as well-preserved as a jar of plums inside the ship, but the rest was just another example of mankind’s steady march backwards. Cows stood in wooden stanchions on the lowest level, eating hay brought by the farmers. Pigs and sheep lived in pens on the second floor, with separate ramps for moving them in and out to the perpetual sunshine. Chickens were everywhere, and often underfoot.

  Ramps connected the levels because
the elevator shaft was useless, except as a storage silo for grain. That made perfect sense. What I didn’t understand was their rationale behind preserving every piece of the barn’s original design. Where it would have been more economical to remove the original machinery and make room, the ramps instead wound through spaces that were either too narrow or had too little headroom for easy access. I imagined townsfolk uttering curses for the Founders’ design whenever they hit their foreheads against unyielding metal beams. The people of Dogleg were certainly devoted to their heritage, but I thought it was a little over the top. I wasn’t going to tell them that, however. Let people have their delusions, I say. As long as it doesn’t interfere with my job, they could put the whole thing on stilts and pretend it’s a castle.

  A pair of corporals guarded the ramp to the conference room on the third deck, the only part of the barn not littered with fecal matter. The two blocked my path when I started up the ramp, both raising their hands at the same time as if they were connected by strings to a common puppeteer.

  “This is a private area, sir,” one of them said.

  “Well done, gentlemen,” I interrupted. “I’ll tell the Major you did your job.” I pulled my duster back to reveal the marshal’s badge pinned to my vest. They nodded and backed away. Not very bright, these two. Didn’t even ask my name.

  As unimpressed as I was with the barn, I have to admit I was shocked when I entered the conference room. It absolutely glistened from the loving care it received. Every metal surface was burnished to a high gloss. The long table at the center, surrounded by swivel chairs, looked brand new. Even the old holographic monitor in the center seemed ready to project an image of the planet in mid-air. It would never work again, of course, but the museum quality of the room almost made me think I’d see stars through the portholes. Instead, I saw a wheat field and a rickety windmill.

  A dozen people stood around the table looking over a large paper map. A lieutenant held up his finger for me to be quiet, so I acknowledged him with a nod. I wasn’t in a talkative mood anyway.

  Sunbeams from the portholes bounced wavy strands of light from the table onto the walls, almost like ripples reflected from a pond. Red shimmers reflected off the forward bulkhead.

  I guess the Founders just went crazy with that epoxy.

  I wondered how successful Dogleg would have been if disease hadn’t overtaken the crew during their descent from space. Every barn in the world was the same size and shape, built to land on flat ground and unfold into a ready-made, fully sustainable settlement. With everything from farming equipment to small-form refineries, each vessel had enough tools to plant a city and make it grow. Most of those cities never got built due to the problems caused by Arion’s magnetic fields, but the settlements made do with their limited technology and survived anyway. Dogleg didn’t take advantage of the resources they had within the barn’s fuselage, and they struggled to build a settlement with only the contents of the aft section. Five hundred years later, the town still relied almost entirely on trade routes for the materials it needed. Personally, I’d knock a giant hole in the epoxy and sell off the components. There was certainly a fortune in titanium, aluminum, and plastic inside, and whatever disease killed the crew had most certainly turned to dust with them. The people of Dogleg could build a proper town if they wanted to. Instead, they treated the ship like hallowed ground.

  I tapped the epoxy with a fingernail. Solid. What a waste.

  “I can still see the captain’s face here sometimes,” an old woman’s voice sounded from the table behind me.

  I turned to see who spoke. It was the mayor, judging by the medallion hanging from her neck. She was well-groomed, maybe ninety years old, hair as white as paper. She didn’t look senile, despite what she had just said. “The captain?” I asked.

  “Johann Burenso,” she beamed. “He piloted this ship safely to the ground and saved my ancestors. He still speaks to me.”

  Yep. Senile.

  “Didn’t I say this was a confidential meeting?” a testy female voice said from the far end of the table. I knew that voice, along with the crisply-uniformed militia officer it went with. Red hair pulled back tight as always, Major Darcy Hathan-Fen scowled at me.

  “Looks like everybody got promoted after I left,” I said.

  Her scowl deepened, showing where her wrinkles would take root in future years. “We’re in a meeting, Mister Vonn. Do you need something?”

  “No,” I answered. “I was told you’d want to see me.” I didn’t like the way she said mister.

  “You were misinformed,” she replied, and looked back down at her map. “Since you weren’t invited, you need to leave.”

  I know when I’m not welcomed, which lately is most of the time. It’s the story of my life, really. What I can’t abide is rudeness, so I decided to push back. “Why are you building a military base in Dogleg, Major?”

  She tapped her pencil on the table for several seconds before answering. “That’s none of your concern, Mister Vonn.” Straight to the point, no-nonsense as always. “Now, can you employ your superior tracking skills to find the exit, or do you need an escort?” She indicated the lieutenant next to her with a pistol on his belt.

  I used to respect Hathan-Fen. She’s a competent officer, but remedial in her diplomatic skills. If she’d been just a tiny bit more polite, I’d have gone back to my manhunt and happily forgotten I ever dropped a shadow on Dogleg. Now I decided to find out what the hell was going on.

  “I’ll find my own way out. Thanks.”

  “Ho, Alex,” Halfway smiled when I showed up at his station again. “What did the major say?”

  “She filled me in,” I replied. “Told me to be ready when the repairs get finished.” That was a complete fabrication, of course, pretty much a guess based on what Traore told me. A suspicious person would have seen through my ruse.

  “Great” he replied. “What repairs was she talking about?”

  “The ones caused by the magnetic spike,” I said.

  He furrowed his brow the way he did whenever he was confused. “That doesn’t make sense. There aren’t any repairs.”

  “I must’ve misunderstood,” I tried to look equally confused. I hoped he would volunteer something helpful because I had nothing else to go on.

  “Oh, I know what she meant,” he said. “The problem is those electro-geysers. As long as they keep sparking around the tunnel entrance, we don’t know if we can get the vehicles up close without risking damage to the motors. I’ve heard the maglev works fine, though, so we just need to wait until the geysers calm down.”

  “Ah,” I said, smiling as if it all suddenly made sense. I thought about bluffing my way into some more information, but I knew Brady. He wouldn’t be fooled for long, and I didn’t have the patience to dance around the truth with more hints. I preferred to find my own answers anyway. “Listen, I haven’t slept in a real bed for weeks. Can you send a runner over to the boarding house when it’s time to go?”

  “Sure thing, bud.”

  As I walked away, I stopped and turned to look at Brady one more time. I decided I could probably fake my way through the guilt until it was completely gone, but what would happen if my friends – even if they were just former friends – got hurt because I withheld vital information?

  “Hey,” I said, and trotted back over to Brady.

  Brady, who had turned his back to speak to a subordinate, looked at me again. “Yeah?”

  I fought for the right words to say without being too obvious. “You guys, being senior sergeants now, have to bite your tongue sometimes, even if there were something important that needed to be said?”

  Brady nodded.

  “You’re not the only ones,” I said under my breath. “Remember what happened in Edgewood?”

  “I remember all of it,” he said.

  “I mean specifically about who died in the fire,” I said. “The big guys.”

  Brady scowled. “You mean the…” He looked around and
mouthed the word silently…T’Neth?

  I nodded. “It’s funny how we always seem to run into our old friends, isn’t it?” I said, turning on my heels to leave again. “Don’t forget to send that wake-up call.”

  Chapter Ten

  I checked into the boarding house, a place run by an older couple with no kids. They knew me from previous visits and gave me my regular room on the upper floor. They thought I liked it because the window faced south away from the sun. The real reason was that I could climb outside and leave without being seen from the street. I walked in, locked the door, and threw my pack on the bed.

  A small wooden table sat in the corner of the room by the window. I moved the few amenities - a wash basin, a hand mirror, and a pitcher of water – to one side and unfolded my map on the cleared surface. Dogleg was on the southern half of the map, about half the distance between Celestial City and the equator. Most of my personal notations over the last six years were smudged and faded with age, while the circuitous route showing my pursuit of Jarnum was still sharply defined. The landmarks that were printed on the map were largely intact, save for the folds where the vellum was worn, and still readable for the most part. I pulled my pencil out and updated my journey with a dotted line that went from the abandoned farm to Dogleg.

  Looking at the circle that represented Dogleg, a question formed in my mind. Where the hell am I going? As I sat there contemplating the possibilities, I finally decided I would at least try to get some answers for Mr. Hawkins. It seemed the most expedient way to get a horse, if nothing else. So, seeing a path forward, I put my mind to the task of explaining the militia’s presence in Dogleg.

  Brady said there was a tunnel, and that the maglev was being affected by electro-geysers. I doubted he was referring to the aerovees because they seemed to be in good repair when I saw them hovering by the water tower. I knew about the hovertrain in Maglev Canyon – we called it the Jolly Coffin - that connected the town of Edgewood to Celestial City. That was hundreds of kilometers north of Dogleg, so that couldn’t be what he was talking about, either. It had to be something close, something near town. How could there be a tunnel, though? There weren’t any mountains.