And it did mean something. Not much. But something.
"I just..." Ben's voice floated out of the dimness again. "There's a war coming." He paused. Then, "I don't want to leave things bad with anyone. I thought you might be angry, from before, because... I don't know because–"
"Because you're invading my planet?"
Silence filled the dark. A couple of plastic links of the chair back squeaked.
"I'm sorry," said Ben.
Guilt.
Harper squinted into the dark above him. His brow furrowed deep in confusion.
He feels guilty.
He frowned, identifying the feeling behind the apology, the subtle tone suppressed in Ben's voice. It was all too clear, because Harper felt it, too. He turned back. Ben was looking down into his lap.
We are all guilty.
The silence stretched. Harper felt sorry for the new soldier. He felt sorrier for himself.
"Ben, right?"
"Yes."
"You chose to be here. You had a reason. And you'll always have that to look back on and know That's why I'm here. I don't have that." And it'll never be 'not so bad.'
"You do."
Harper shook his head. "No."
"Yes, you do. Somewhere along the line, you chose too."
"You don't know that." And neither do I.
"Yes I do."
"No, you don't." You can't know what side I'm on, because I don't.
"Yes I do. You agreed to help them."
"And you believe that? You trust me? Really?" More than I do myself?
"Believe which part?"
"What?"
"That you agreed to help them? Or that you actually will help them?"
"Either. Both."
"Well, I know you probably didn't have much choice but to agree. But you have a choice to actually help or not."
"And you believe that I will?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Ben looked around again. One hand pinched the bridge of his nose. The other tapped his knee, agitated.
Harper squinted at him in the dark. Why are you nervous?
Finally, Ben leaned closer. "Because they do" he said in a barely-audible whisper. He met Harper's eyes this time, looked right into them. "They do. You will help them. Because they trust you."
"I'm pretty sure that's not–"
"It is."
There is something you're not saying. Harper squinted harder into the dark eyes – now just points of light in the near-pitch-black room. "But–"
"They know more about you thank you think. They know that you'll help. And I know it, too."
"Should you?" What do you know?
"Like I said, if you were guilty of something you'd be lock–"
"I am locked up."
"Not like you would be. Believe me, this is not how they treat people they don't trust."
"Hm."
"Look, didn't you ever wonder why they found you? You were on a ship of five thousand, and they found you within minutes. You. Why?"
"There weren't many farmers on the ship."
"I didn't say how, I said why."
"They needed a farmer. Someone who knew the Sky Reverends, who could show them to the dirt stores."
"There are hundreds of thousands of farmers across Skyland, they could pick one up in a heartbeat. One who would have the same knowledge as you."
"My father is a Sky Reverend."
"There are thousands of Sky Reverends, one for every village at least."
"So?"
"So why pick you up?"
Because my father's not just any Sky Reverend. "What are you saying?"
"They know more than you think."
"I..." do they? "I doubt it." If they knew any more I'd be dead.
"They knew who you were. They knew where you were, even though I'm guessing you, like the rest of the country folk, didn't exactly have advance tickets."
"No..." Harper squinted. His brow tensed. He flinched from the possibility. How did they know so quickly? How did they know to check that ship? "So what do they know?"
"I don't know."
"Tell me." Harper sat up, his hammock swinging wildly. He clutched hard at its edge as he leaned forward. "What do they know?"
Somebody shifted in the next hammock over. The guard still sitting by the door turned his head and looked cautiously at his charges chatting in the dark.
Harper lowered his voice. "What do they know?"
"I don't know. Look, they're not telling me that kind of thing. But, look I worked in the service before. I know how they work. And I just know... they found you for a reason. They know you. And if they know you're not a threat, then they have the information to make that judgment. I don't know how... I just know this can't be the first time you've met them. They already knew you."
"What the hell does that–"
"Look I've got to get back." He got up, the chair-bag swung against it's hooks.
"Ben. Ben!"
But he was already at the door. A second later it had clicked shut behind him.
What do they know? What do they know!
He glared after the shut door. But it didn't open again, and Harper lay back in the hammock, arms crossed, eyes squinting angrily at the ceiling.
What do they know!
Harper curled up against the plastic links. He squeezed his eyes shut. His tense joints shifted against the chains of the bed, and he tried to get comfortable.
But it wasn't the chains of the hanging contraption that were keeping him awake.
Harper couldn't possibly believe he could sleep. But a few hours later, he woke up. The lights had been turned back up, and the other passengers were milling about, folding up blankets, and making chairs out of their beds.
Harper looked out the window.
This time, he did not look at the infinite, extending space on the other side of the glass.
He looked at the brown shell of a planet.
Chapter Seventeen
in which there is Sky!
Harper took one step and the ground lurched under him. He took one breath and his teeth ground against the air, thick with dust and heat. The heat burned against his skin. He looked up, and tears spilled over his cheeks.
Sky... blue Sky.
He closed his eyes against the blazing sun, but the brightness stabbed through his lids. It was the most welcome pain he'd ever felt. His mouth stretched into a wide smile. He could taste the salt of his tears as they ran over his lips. He laughed and opened his eyes and stared, eyes watering and burning, into the Sky. He laughed again, smiling broadly at its crystal blue. Only a couple days had passed since he last stood on Skyland but... but that was another life.
His body clock had hit zero and started, very slowly, to count back up again.
I am alive and under the Sky again!
Then the laughter choked.
His smile tensed and twisted into a grimace, his eyes squeezed shut against different tears. His throat clenched against a sob.
I am so sorry... My lady... I am sorry. You are more beautiful from the ground.
The wave of guilt felt like it would drown him.
I am so sorry.
But even as he prayed apologies and begged forgiveness, a second wave of guilt choked him. He would betray Her yet again. He would fly through Her blue fields yet again. He would defy scripture and Sky Reverend-law yet again. He would throw away all supplication to Her because another lady's face was sharper in his mind, and the pain in his heart was sharper than his guilt.
Zara.
He looked down from the Sky. The tears were drying. The laughter was gone. The Sky faded into the periphery, grey and unimportant for now.
Zara.
He looked around the docks where the Union ship had landed. The excitement and the babbling crowd were gone. Harper watched the docks slowly filling with people once more. But this time, it was different. Union soldiers replaced excited travelers. Weapons, not binoculars, hung off their sho
ulders. And drab brown replaced excited blue in the threads of the crowd.
And it was quiet.
No one spoke to Harper. The civilians from the Union ship wrote or read from notebooks as they walked, or talked softly to the soldiers, who answered with curt directions and gestures or whispered into hidden communications devices. Others worked in silence, carrying, sorting or counting boxes and sacks being unloaded from the ship. Still others were standing around idly, politely ignoring Harper as he stood with tears stilly drying on his cheeks.
He ignored them back.
Instead, he looked back at the ship that he had only seen from the inside. He'd been shuttled onto the Union ship without even a window to look out of. Now he could see the black needle that he had been riding in.
It was a weapon.
Sharp, like a bayonet – a bayonet on the end of a very long rifle – it was shiny and smooth, like the rooms inside it. Long and thin, like the uniform corridors, it reached high up, nearly piercing the Sky even as it rested on the dock.
And it was not alone.
Harper looked at the line of needle ships, then back at the one he had just come off of. He felt sick.
It IS a weapon.
A weapon on his own soil. A weapon he had ridden back home.
Abomination.... abomination. I should not be here.
Something hateful began to uncoil from the pit of his stomach. The violent defensiveness reared–
No!
He flinched away from the ugly thing rooted deep in his mind.
No... I came to help. We came to help...
He closed his eyes. Zara's face was still there, clear and calming.
Help her, if nothing else...
He turned his back on the needle of a ship, opened his eyes, and took a calming breath.
The air smelled like charcoal.
The scent was barely there, and there was no breeze to carry it on. Harper sniffed again. It was definitely there, a faint burning smell floating on the still air. He walked a few paces down the side of the docks. On the launch pad, just beyond the Union's ship was another Skyland ship.
Jet black streaks framed a gaping fissure in its side.
The gleaming white giant-bone of a ship stuck in the sand was cracked as if it had been struck by lightening. Tiny threads of smoke still curled around the edges of the wound.
The fires are still burning.
Harper felt tears well up in his eyes again. But this time they did not fall. A part of him wanted to let them go, wanted to cry like a little boy. The part of him that had looked up from the barren countryside, looked up onto the distant ships and felt awe for the enemies even as he prepared to destroy them, that part wanted to cry at the destruction of such a beautiful thing.
Magnificent abominations.
Even now, the ship still stood. Ladders stood at its sides and men went up and down these, drawing hoses–hoses, Harper could only assume, bringing precious water to quell the fires. Other men carried pieces from inside, perhaps salvaging the preserved bits, perhaps clearing out the debris.
Magnificent abominations... And not defeated yet!
But Harper's stomach turned at the thought of the ship that didn't survive.
This is the lucky one.
He looked further down the docks for the others. Beyond the cracked ship, beyond the needle ships, the vast cylinders of the other Skyland ships sat ready on their launch pads. Smoke curled between them, too.
Men with guns paced in the smoke.
Some wore the dirt-colored clothes of the Union army and squinted in the sun or sauntered back and fourth looking bored. Others wore slick, black uniforms with blue bands around the neck.
Skyland's defense units.
Skyland's army rarely saw action. But, apparently, they were ready for it. Ready at the side of the Union.
Not much of a war, then.
Harper stared at the soldiers of Skyland, standing beside the Union troops. He did not know much about the defense units of his planet. The country folk had little to do with the bureaucracy of government outside the fields and villages. Sky Reverends were their enforcers, and isolation kept the peace.
Now, he watched the blue-banded soldiers pacing up and down and up and down along the docks beside the still-smoking ships, beside the foreign soldiers in brown. The Skylanders did not squint in the sun. They looked around with keen eyes accustomed to the sharp light. One or two chatted with the Union troops. Someone laughed.
So who is fighting?
"That's the third, I think?"
Harper jumped.
He blinked at the person talking to him. It was the skinny guard from the common room of the Union ship. He was standing beside Harper staring wide-eyed at the nearest blackened ship with the giant fissure. Harper didn't say anything, and the young soldier kept babbling.
"The second one fell... everywhere when it exploded. I think they're still looking for debris. This one was the closest, probably right under the explosion."
Harper ignored him. He shook his head and turned away from the smoke and the Skyland defense units and the Union troops. He didn't care. He was here to do one job. He'd let everyone else worry about theirs. His eyes followed his guard's curious stare, back towards the burned wreck of the third ship.
It would have been empty. This one, at least.... would have been empty.
The guard was still talking.
"The others aren't so damaged," he said. "They're hoping to repair them."
"Repair them?"
The soldier looked at Harper and laughed, a short, surprised laugh. "Of course they're going to repair them."
"But... is it safe?"
"Well, it'll have to be. They can't let the whole project go to waste. Let billions of... what currency do you use here?
"Suns."
"Let billions of Suns go up in smoke? I don't think so. Besides, making it safe is our job. No one'll be able to get a bomb inside these things again." He smiled at Harper and punched him on the shoulder. "Not with us around, right?"
Harper cringed. He tried not to grimace. He ground his teeth together and tried to clamp down on the voice floating in his own mind. His own voice, echoing his father, his own voice in the trenches of muck, explaining it all to Zara: "If the people still live they will build more ships. They must be full." A fresh attempt to launch the ships would only draw fresh attempts from the Sky Reverends. From his father. Unless someone stopped them.
"Well, base is this way," said the soldier. "I need to get out of this sun! But I guess you're probably used to it, huh?"
"Hm."
The over-friendly soldier reminded Harper of the faux politeness of the angry man – smiling, chatting about their "guest's" comfort. Harper studied the young soldier's face. Open and curious, his smile didn't seem forced. Maybe he just didn't know how to talk to his charge.
Harper did not know either.
Prisoner or guest? What am I?
The young guard had walked a few paces away and was paused, waiting, and looking around at the landscape outside the docks. His eyes were big and his smile wide on his thin face as he looked around at the Sky, at the horizon, at the expanses of sand extending forever beyond the bridge out of the city.
"Where is it? The base?" asked Harper, starting to follow.
"Just a mile over... over... over, ah, this way."
He waved his hand absently in the direction of the bridge where a handful of civilians and two soldiers were already headed away from the docks. He looked far more distracted by his surroundings than by where they were supposed to be going. His head twisted this way and that, eyes swooping over the wide horizon of the Skyland countryside. But he started walking again, still looking around, and Harper walked with him.
Harper wondered where Ben was. He squinted at the group ahead of him, but the soldiers there were both female. He hadn't seen Ben since he'd left the previous night, telling Harper that the Union troops knew something... something... else, something he w
ouldn't say.
Just do your job.
Harper tried to put Ben's words out of his mind.
How could he know anything? He's been with them less than a day. How could he–
"Damn it is a fire here." The young soldier's voice cut into Harper's thoughts.
"You get used to it."
"Damn, though. It is hot."
Harper stared at the smiling, wide-eyed young man next to him.
"It's your first time here?"
"Yeah. Been stationed a few planets over since training, a place a lot like Union Proper. Nothing like this.... Hey, where are all the people? I thought Skyland was overcrowded."
"Just the city. And... I don't know where they all are."
Harper had been wondering just that. Skyland itself wasn't actually overcrowded at all. In fact, it had seemingly endless masses of land for the population to expand into. But it was all countryside, just sand and scavengers and kale. In a hundred years of drought, the people had squeezed into the city, where the resources of the few wealthy Skylanders were concentrated. The city was full and the country was barren – that's why the ships had been built in the first place: everyone wanted to leave.
Harper had only been in the city a few times. His family was farmers, not traders. There wasn't much need to cross the bridge. On the few occasions they had, the weight of the city's population growth had been very apparent. Sprawling malls were filled with shoppers and traders, stacked workspaces rose high into the Sky and long lines of people waiting to get into the buildings. Everywhere people went about their business, bumping into each other, talking loudly, arms full of... things in bags; Harper didn't even know what they could possibly be buying all the time, but buy they did in the city. And there were always plenty of people around looking for a deal on something.
The last time had been the worst.
Harper shuddered remembering the vast masses of people crowding the docks before the first ship left. His stomach twisted imagining a similar scene for the second ship's launch.
Now, as much as he could see of the city was empty of anyone but military personnel and the civilians from the ship. Harper took a last look at the docks as they walked away. Aside from the Skyland defense units, there were no locals. Foreign troops and bemused Union civilians shielded their eyes from the bright sun, fanning themselves with notebooks or folders or their hands. But there were no other Skylanders. Not city folk. Not country folk.
Skyland Page 11
