by Erica Rue
Zane headed to the Calypso, feeling tired, even though he had just taken a nap. He wanted to make sure that the ship repairs were proceeding as scheduled. All of the physical damage to the hull had been fixed, and there were only a few minor repairs left.
He climbed down into the cargo bay to check on the charging matrix in person. It was still under fifty percent. Somehow, he knew that if Dione and Lithia didn’t return with the meds, that Bel would be dead before it hit one hundred. Maybe sooner, at this rate.
Where were they? If he didn’t figure this out soon and get communication restored, he knew what he would have to do. He would have to fly the Calypso down to the planet, defensive weapons or not. He wasn’t going to let Bel die, even if she didn’t return his feelings. Every time they got close, she put up another wall. He could take a hint, but somewhere, deep inside him, he still had hope.
Confident that if worse came to worst the Calypso would be ready to fly down to the surface, he prepared to go back to the command center. On a whim, he stopped by Bel’s cabin and grabbed the giant textbook, The Chemistry of Life, from her bunk. It was lighter than he imagined it would be, and he hoped she would laugh when he read her bedtime stories from it later. But first, he needed to restore communications, and that meant taking down the dampening field. Someone at the Mountain Base was powering it. He didn’t know why, but he assumed it had something to do with all those people down there. The ones that shouldn’t exist.
Zane thought that if he sent a barrage of small requests and created a feedback loop, he might be able to overwhelm the computer. After all, if the tech up here was a hundred years old, then maybe the tech down there would be as well.
So he tried it. At first, it seemed like it just might work. Each request generated two more, which generated two more, and so on. Eventually, it would be too much and the systems would not be able to handle it. They would shut down, and along with them would go the dampening field. Simple.
For a while he could see those small requests multiplying. They should have been enough to take the system over capacity. But then he realized that something was clearing away the requests at an impossible rate. He slumped back in his seat. It wasn’t going to work.
After hours of brainstorming, this was the best plan that he had come up with. And now, he had nothing. There must be a whole team of people working down there or a really good AI fending off his attack, which made sense. This dampening field required an insane amount of energy to maintain, so why would they leave it vulnerable? What could he do that they wouldn’t expect? He was just one kid.
He lugged the textbook to the med bay and sat down next to Bel.
“I picked this up for you, in case you were having trouble sleeping. How about a bedtime story?” Zane opened the book before Bel could protest. “Wait. What is this?”
Inside the textbook were not pages, but a hollow cavity which held a single pencil and pages and pages of drawings. No, they were comics.
“Just something to pass the time,” Bel said.
“Can I look at them?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I guess so.”
It only took a couple of pages to realize that the comics were about all of them on a journey through space. The professor was the spaceship, and each of them had a superpower. They traveled through the galaxy battling evil. Dione had perfect memory, Lithia had mind control, and Zane could control electricity.
“This is awesome. What’s your superpower?” Zane couldn’t find it in the pages he had read.
Bel shifted in the bed. “I haven’t decided yet,” she replied.
In the episode Zane read, they were fighting some bug that Bel had brought on board, very small, in her “insect catalog.” In a matter of hours, it grew to an insane size. The group teamed up to defeat it. In the final frame, Bel was contemplating throwing out the bug collection that had gotten them into the mess.
“Our passions kill us,” comic-Bel said. “But what better way is there to die?”
By now real-life Bel was asleep again, and Zane had an idea.
“I’m going to sneak a small spider in, dressed up as something it wants, then let that spider weave a web in the background,” he told himself. “The web will only divert small amounts of power, growing thread by thread until it will be impossible to clear in time. The only way to stop it will be to shut down the dampening field.”
He had tried a brute force attack, but whoever was on guard down there was smart. Hopefully not smart enough to catch this.
“One problem,” Bel mumbled, apparently awake.
“What’s that?”
“Spiders aren’t insects.”
***
Zane was back in the control center. When the Mountain Base had accessed the system to erase the images of the planet, it had first downloaded copies. It stored that data somewhere, and that was his way in. He would have to find a way to hide his ‘spider’ in the image files in the brief time before they were copied. And he would have to create the spider.
He set his ambush, making sure that it would be hidden in the image files the next time they were taken. By morning, if everything had worked, he would be able to eliminate the dampening field, reestablish contact, and save Bel.
He went back to tell her the good news, only to find her coughing uncontrollably. She was gasping, red in the face. She rolled her head to the side, coughing blood that spilled and dripped onto the floor.
Warning lights were flashing on the diagnostic panel, and Zane didn’t know what to do. Some of the readouts were familiar, but most were gibberish to him. He thought there were more red lights and text than before, and that couldn’t be a good thing. There was nothing to do, except stand by and watch.
Bel wiped the side of her mouth with a piece of gauze Zane gave her, her face pale with fear when she saw the blood. He cleaned the blood from the table, and finally the floor. Bel’s eyes were glassy, like she was trying not to cry.
“Zane, I want you to know something.”
“You need to rest right now,” he said. He was afraid of what she might tell him. He preferred to wonder about her feelings, rather than know she didn’t feel the same way.
“I’m getting worse. I just wanted to explain why I never—” She broke off to cough again, covering her mouth with the gauze.
“Don’t try to talk right now,” Zane said, giving her some water. “It just makes it worse.”
He silenced the alarm that went off to let him know something bad was happening, and noticed a flashing icon. It had been grayed out until now, so he pushed it. A compartment on the side of the bed opened, and he pulled out an oxygen mask. He inspected it to make sure it was working, then gave it to Bel, who pulled it up to her face and took a deep breath. He held her hand and told her what he had done, and soon, she was asleep.
He worried as he stood over her, the machines quietly whirring and beeping around them. The med bay could keep patching her up, but not for much longer.
27. DIONE
Dione and Brian didn’t talk much that morning as they walked toward the Ficaran settlement, or Field Temple, as Brian called it, which she imagined was another research base. Her legs were sore, her back hurt, and she had a lot on her mind. She kept running through likely scenarios in her head, assigning them probabilities, but what good did that do? The Aratians had her best friend, and they could be doing anything from ripping out her finger nails to throwing her a tea party. Dione had no way of knowing.
“We’re not moving fast enough,” Dione said. “Bel, my friend, is dying. She doesn’t have a lot of time. Lithia could be dying.”
“We can’t go any faster without a mount, and Canto is back at the settlement.”
Brian said that the shuttle would help, but she didn’t see how. A shuttle didn’t exactly scream stealth rescue, and they weren’t equipped with weapons. A doubt crept into the back of her mind. Maybe Brian had no intention of helping her rescue Lithia, and was just using her to get a shuttle for whatever desper
ate reason he had. Probably to impress girls. He was almost as bad a flirt as Lithia. After all, nothing else would explain how friendly he’d been.
She was about to press for details about his plan when a shrill whistling resounded through the trees. She opened her mouth to speak, but Brian put his fingers to her lips and gave her a meaningful glance. Her heart skipped a beat.
“Follow me, and match my pace. It’s important,” he said. Was it another tracking party?
They approached a cluster of strange-looking trees. Their thin bark had peeled into curls.
“They’re whistler trees. If you move by them too quickly, they make a whistling sound. They’re a poor man’s alarm. Smugglers like to set up base near them, but not too close.”
“Why can’t we go around?” Dione asked.
“I want to save time. Whoever went by was mounted,” he said. She gave him a puzzled look, so he continued, “You said we were moving too slow, and you were right.”
“How do you know it was a mounted person?”
“Just trust me. I know what a rider passing through whistler trees sounds like.”
They crept through the grove, careful not to sound the alarm, and Brian followed the tracks up a hill. At the bottom of the hill was a small stream, where a large man was picking mushrooms and paying no attention to his surroundings. He was singing some tune Dione had never heard. Munching grass about halfway up the incline was a giant tapir. Or at least that’s what it looked like, with its short trunk and boar-like torso. It did look furrier than a tapir though, and much larger. On its back was a saddle.
“Are we stealing his… mount?” Dione asked. “What is that thing?”
“It’s a machi,” Brian said, “and it’s more of a short-term borrow. We’ll send it right back once we’re close. He’s an Aratian anyway.”
She put her hands on her hips. “And that makes it right? How can you tell he’s Aratian?”
Brian sighed. “I don’t recognize him.”
“And you can recognize every Ficaran?”
“All the foragers, yes, and he’s not one of ours.”
Dione was surprised how okay she was with the idea of stealing this man’s machi. It was short-term, after all, and she had a good cause. Lives were at stake. It made her think of the Architect and the journal’s author. Did the Architect have a good reason to kidnap her and, if the author was to be believed, drug her?
“I may need your help. Listen up,” Brian said, climbing back down the hill. “Different tunes are different commands. This animal has default commands it was born understanding. “This one lets it know you want to climb on.” Brian hummed a six-note sequence. “These five notes tell it to go faster.” He hummed a simple arpeggio.
“What about slow down?” Dione asked.
Brian grinned that wicked grin of his. “You won’t need that one.”
Brian whistled the brief tune. Immediately the machi perked up its ears and took a few steps toward him. Brian approached quietly, still unnoticed by the man. Brian hummed the same tune he had whistled, but this time, it happened during a lull in the man’s song, and he whirled around to see who was there. He whistled, and his machi came running.
Brian stood motionless for a moment, then sprinted down the hill toward the man. Before he could climb on his machi and ride away, Brian tackled him to the ground.
“Dione, now!”
Dione may not have been a perfect singer, but she could carry a tune. She reproduced the six-note sequence he had taught her, and the machi, trunk rolled under in submission, approached and lowered itself to allow her to climb on. She aimed the beast toward Brian and sang for it to go faster. On her first pass, Dione came by too wide. The man tried to sing something, but Brian punched him in the gut.
Dione cringed at the violence. There’s a reason for all this, she reminded herself.
She needed to turn, and quickly. She sang the arpeggio again, and she was flying, far faster than she expected. There were not a lot of settings on these creatures. Her unexpected speed sent her hurtling by one more time. Pulling on the reins slowed it down some, but it clearly was conditioned to respond to the music.
“Come on!” Brian said. When she turned once more, she had lost enough speed that Brian was able to swing himself on.
“I need her to get home!” The man seemed shocked that someone was taking his machi, but more than that, he seemed heartbroken. What have I done?
“We’ll send her back in a few hours. My friend is dying. It’s an emergency!” She hoped he understood.
They sped away quickly, but once the man was out of sight, Brian sang a different arpeggio, slowing the machi down. It was an older animal, though still strong. Dione was holding on tight to the reins. Brian was holding onto her, his powerful arms around her waist. He pulled himself close, probably worried by her driving. Even after they slowed down, he loosened his grip, but he never released her.
“So how does that whole song thing work?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You said that a lot of animals are born responding to music like that?”
“Machi respond to certain tunes. Some wild animals, too, but the Aratians have been breeding them to strengthen the response. And Ficarans, to a lesser extent.”
“Then it’s an inherited trait, not learned. It’s not magic.”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course, it does! The more you understand about the world, the better choices you can make.”
“My father would have loved to meet you,” Brian said softly. Dione blushed, and was glad he couldn’t see her face.
“Tell me more about the machi.”
“Most of them can be trained further, but certain responses are in their blood. The Farmer claimed that he created them that way to help us.”
More engineered animals? If that claim was true, then the Farmer must have been one of the terraformers. Did that mean the Architect was a terraformer, too? Dione couldn’t imagine what kind of a person you had to be to claim that you made people and animals. Still, the animal part might be true, based on what she had found on the station.
***
There was nothing romantic or glamorous about riding a machi with another person. Even the hugging bit got sweaty and gross after a while, so they dismounted and stretched before trading positions. She was sore from sitting and stiff for fear of moving in the wrong way and bothering Brian. After several hours of uncomfortable riding, it was late afternoon.
“We need to stop for the night, but we’ll make it to the Field Temple tomorrow morning,” Brian said. “The machi is getting tired, and if we send it back now, that man might make it home for dinner. Well, a late dinner.”
“So now you’re worried about him?”
Brian dismounted. “Don’t put this on me. You helped. You’re the one in a hurry. I’m just trying to help you.” He rubbed his knuckles absentmindedly, and Dione could see the bruises there. Evidence of the fist fight.
“That’s because you want something from me. Would you be doing this if you didn’t want a Flyer? Why do you want it, anyway? To steal more food from the Aratians, help out your smuggling operation? Or is it to impress the girls back home?”
A cloud passed over Brian’s face. “You don’t understand.”
Dione was taken aback. Why was she being so belligerent? A few moments of reflection gave her the answer. She felt guilty. They had taken that man’s machi because she needed it. She had sung the songs to take it.
“Then explain it to me,” she said, now speaking in a calm voice.
Brian didn’t. He hummed a few measures Dione didn’t recognize to the machi, which snorted and trotted off into the forest. “We’re in Ficaran territory now. There’s a small shelter in another mile or two where we’ll rest for the night. In the morning, we’ll go to my settlement.”
Dione looked up at the sky, imagining the station orbiting beyond. If Bel and Lithia could just hang in there for another day, she would
make it.
28. LITHIA
Lithia would have spent the day pacing in her cell and banging on the door, but her ankle still hurt. There were no windows—only a small cot and a bucket in the corner. When a bearded man with dark eyes came to visit her, she assumed that he was Benjamin Bram. After all, that’s where those trackers said they were taking her. Aside from the same nose, she didn’t see much of Evy in this man.
He didn’t say a word to her, so when he pulled out an autoneedle and didn’t explain, she balked. One of his men raised his gun, and she stopped struggling. Once she realized he wanted a blood sample, she held out her arm. “Go ahead. No drugs. No demon blood.” He stared at her for a moment when she said that, and she stared right back.
When he turned to leave, she couldn’t help but add, “Or maybe use it to find me a good husband! I’m already seventeen. My expiration date is fast approaching.” The man paused and looked back at her again, but he maintained his silence. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but the whole idea of the Matching that Brian had mentioned made her sick.
She might be terrified, but she was still alive, and she figured there was probably a good reason for it. She got the feeling that the people in this building didn’t hit women, unlike the trackers. Or at least, not in public. The very thought made her angry.
She sat in her cell, trying to come up with the most believable story, but Evy could so easily unravel some of her spun tales. A woman came with a tray of food. The woman sampled the meal, as if to say, “Here, we promise we didn’t poison this.” It didn’t exactly inspire confidence, but Lithia was hungry.
“The tea will help your ankle,” she said before retreating back into the hallway.
The tea also made her sleepy, but when she woke up, her ankle did feel better. She was surprised to find that she could easily put weight on it, but she was still sore. No more limp, though. She didn’t expect care like that out here, especially for a prisoner.
Lithia spent the rest of the afternoon trying to think up a means of escape, but the door was locked and she had nothing that might work as a pick. Maybe she should have been nicer to Bram. She was starting to get hungry again when a girl, maybe fifteen years old, appeared at the door. The first thing Lithia noticed were her eyes. They were her father’s eyes. Her own eyes. This girl looked impossibly like her. The fear she had held in her heart about this place was now a certainty.
