“You can’t be serious, Mira,” Conner said without malice. He just looked exhausted and defeated.
“I am,” she answered. “I still need your help, and we still have a deal.”
“There’s no deal left!” the Captain with the British accent spat viciously. “The fleet is gone, burned to the ground, all thanks to your deal. There’s no one left to honor it.”
“There’s you,” Mira told her, and the girl glared.
“You realize,” Dresden began, “our fleet notwithstanding, you’ve lost almost two-thirds of the force you set out with, and you’re not even to San Francisco yet.”
“Our numbers have dwindled, yes, but the ones who remain are stronger.”
There were murmurs of agreement from the Helix on the cars. The Wind Traders seemed less impressed.
“Mira, you had to know the answer would be no,” Conner told her. “We’re leaving in less than an hour, and when we’re gone, we’re not coming back. We have to rebuild and start over, and I certainly hope we have the ‘strength’ for it, but don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”
She felt Dresden watching her curiously as she reached into her pocket and grabbed what was there. “You’re strong enough. I know it. But the truth is, there is no starting over.”
Mira threw a handful of quarters at their feet. They were Strange Lands quarters, and the Captains flinched, expecting them to explode, but they only sparked and fizzled and nothing else. It was a pathetic display, and everyone stared down at the coins in confusion.
“The artifacts are dying,” Mira told them. As she spoke, each Captain slowly looked up at her. There was fear behind their eyes. “A few months from now, they’ll all be dead. The components, the combinations, whatever energy made them what they were will be gone. It means … the Wind Traders will die with them.”
“This is a trick,” one Captain said. “She’s trying to manipulate us.”
Conner stared at Mira in shock. When he spoke, his voice was almost pleading. “My Chinooks and Zephyrs work just fine.”
“For now, but they are dying,” she told him, and it gave her no pleasure. “It’s why the Barriers on the ships have been failing early. It’s why we’ve been having to replace combinations at twice the rate we normally do. Ask Dresden, he knows.”
The Captains turned to him, clearly hoping he would refute everything Mira said. It was a vain hope.
“She’s right,” Dresden said. “I’ve checked the Wind Shear’s stock of components, half of them are dead or near powerless.”
“The stash?” Conner asked, his voice a whisper. He meant the giant haul of Strange Lands artifacts in the Wind Shear’s hold, the one that was supposed to have made their fortune.
“Worthless,” Dresden answered, locking eyes with his brother. “Or it will be.”
“Bloody hell…” the British Captain said, covering her eyes. The others were having similar reactions, and Mira could understand why. They’d already lost so much, now they were suddenly faced with the reality that they were going to lose the rest.
“You can go home if you want,” Mira continued, hating the pain her words caused, “spend the last few months living as you’ve lived, I wouldn’t blame you, but it would just be on borrowed time. I know it hurts, but there’s another option, a better one. You can use the time you have left to help me change things.”
“To defeat the Assembly you mean,” the British girl stated. “You’re mad.”
Mira turned and pointed to the tops of the train cars, where the White Helix crouched, watching and listening. “Have you noticed their eyes? Have you seen even a trace of the Tone in any of them? They’re all Heedless. Zoey freed each of them, she freed me too. She can stop the Tone. She can do even more than that, and if we can find her, I believe, I truly believe, she can save us all.”
“Zoey’s just a name to us,” Conner said.
“What would you have us do?” Dresden asked his brother. “Go back to what’s left of Currency? Wait out the last few months while we can still sail? Then what? Become farmers? Join some Midnight City faction? I don’t see myself doing either of those, do you?”
“You’re buying into this?” Conner asked.
“I bought into it back at the Wind Fall, watching Mira do what she did with that alien. I’d never seen anything like that, never had any inkling whatsoever that they were more than just giant, walking death machines. It showed me there’s more to what’s going on here. It’s a big maybe, I know that, but I’m sorry, it’s a hell of a lot better choice than going home and waiting for the Chinooks to die. If I’m going down, it’s gonna be on my ship. I watched too many people I know die a few days ago to just pretend it didn’t happen.”
Conner shook his head, trying to absorb it all. “We have eleven ships left, Dresden, how the hell are we going to transport all the White Helix west? How the hell are we going to defend ourselves? How the hell are we going to do anything?”
“I have a few thoughts on that,” Mira said, and the Wind Traders’ attention shifted back to her. From the distance, the Assembly called again, her vision blurred, but she steadied herself and hoped no one noticed.
* * *
“THIS IS YOUR IDEA?” Smitty asked in dismay. They were inside a giant repair bay, its rusted metallic walls lined with shelves of countless old tools and machines. In the middle, on the bay’s tracks, were two massive diesel locomotives, each with the faded insignia of the Santa Fe Railway. They were imposing, enormous, and clearly powerful. At least, assuming they could be brought back to life. Smitty, Caspira, the Captains, and a few White Helix Doyen stared at the huge machines with skepticism.
“I found them yesterday,” Mira said, forcing herself to think through the projections from the Assembly. Conversations were the hardest when they were in her head. “They look like they’re in good shape. I don’t see much rust, they were probably protected in here.”
Max sat next to her inside the giant building, and beside him was Nemo. The big cat circled around the dog, rubbing against him and purring loudly. His opinion of Max had certainly changed. He’d gone from disinterest to adoration, and if Mira didn’t know better, she’d think it was because the dog saved the cat’s life. Either way, Max didn’t exactly seem pleased, he looked up at Mira with an embarrassed look.
“You want to get them running?” Caspira asked, walking down the length of the machines.
“What if we did?” Conner asked. “What are you going to do, pile your thousand Helix on top of them?”
“There’s tons of ruined rail cars outside,” Mira answered, “but there’s also some in pretty good shape. I’m sure out of all of them, we could find ten or fifteen that are still solid.”
“Then what?” Smitty asked.
“We armor them,” she replied. “There’s tons of scrap metal, and the artifacts in the Wind Shear will let us make Barriers, Gravitrons, Lithes, you name it.”
“Artifacts, based on your own estimation, that don’t have much life left in them,” the British Captain retorted.
Mira felt herself getting frustrated, but she pushed it down. “Look at this.”
As a group they walked toward the far edge of the big building, where an old, dusty office had been built. Inside sat a few desks, a safe, shelves with binders and books, and a giant map on the back wall near where the bulletin boards had been before they crumbled to the floor.
It showed the western half of the United States, and a spiderweb of lines that represented railways. Mira pointed to one in particular, marked the “Western Terminus,” and the group could see where it twisted and turned, until it finally ran into a metropolis that had once been named San Francisco.
“Terminus,” Conner remarked. “Is there a less ominous choice?”
“Dresden,” Mira said. “Where’s the Citadel on here?”
He studied the map. “I only saw the thing once, but it looked pretty much right in the center of Oakland. I remember because I could see the Presidium to
o, but it landed across the bay, in downtown. Made it easy to mark.”
The Presidium was one of the giant Assembly ships that had come barreling out of the sky during the invasion. One landed in San Francisco, which meant the ruins not only were home to it, but to the Citadel as well, which had been built after the planet was conquered.
“That’s what I was hoping,” Mira said, following the line of one track with her finger as it came to a stop where the land met the bay, right where Oakland would have been. “If we want to get to Zoey, this line’ll take us right to her doorstep.”
“Who’s to say all these rails are still functional?” Conner asked.
“You’ve been out there just as much as I have,” Dresden replied. “When have you not seen a rail line that wasn’t in good shape? Those things are solid, I wish more of them were broken.”
Mira could imagine. A Landship hitting a line of train tracks at full Chinook was probably unpleasant.
“Our real problem’s gonna be other trains still on the tracks,” Dresden continued. “Stopping before we run straight into them is easy enough in the day, but I assume we’re gonna be moving at night.”
Mira nodded. “We split the Landships into two groups. One flanks the train, runs escort. The smaller one scouts ahead, looks for obstructions and Assembly.” The Captains listened, and she could sense a change in their demeanors. They weren’t starting to believe necessarily … but they did seem to be doubting less fervently.
“We armor it, salvage what’s left of the cannons, mount them up and down the thing. The Reflection Box still works, which means we can still make whatever we need. We do all that, add in artifacts and armed Landships running escort, then…”
“We have a rolling fortress,” Conner replied, rubbing his chin.
“All we need is to get to the Phantom Regiment,” Mira said. “Then, together, we all go after Zoey.”
“Guys.” Smitty’s voice from outside the office pulled their attention. He and Caspira were both inside one of the train’s cockpits. Everyone watched as Smitty punched something on the operator controls.
The locomotive’s instruments lit up under all the dust, and Smitty looked at Mira and Dresden with a smile.
More conversation ensued, discussing the train and the realities, but for Mira, it faded away into the background. The Assembly swelled in her head again.
“You okay?” Dresden asked, and she nodded, told him she was tired, that she needed rest, and left them there, discussing the plan and the logistics. She should stay, but she couldn’t. They couldn’t see her like this.
Mira exited into the sunlight, rounded the side of the giant repair bay, out of sight.
Guardian …
Show us …
She tried to push them away, but they were overwhelming. She gripped the edge of an old air-conditioning unit, but it wasn’t enough. Mira collapsed onto her back, staring up at the sky.
Guardian …
Come closer …
Show us …
Then everything went black.
28. SPECIAL PLACES
MIRA WOKE TO A STRANGE mix of darkness and light. The world was covered in night, but far above in the sky, giant, wavering bands of color fluctuated like waves in the ocean.
It all made for a surreal disorientation. Wherever she was, everything was silent, there was only the sound of a desolate wind, the kind that used to blow through the Strange Lands inner rings, but this wasn’t that place.
Something even more obvious occurred to her. The silence didn’t just extend to the environment, it was in her head too. The hundreds of impressions and emotions from the Assembly were, amazingly, mercifully gone, and the sheer relief of it overwhelmed her. Mira had forgotten what it felt like to have her mind to herself, and she exhaled a long, slow relieved breath.
Until a nagging pain in her back formed. She was lying on something hard and metallic.
Mira rolled over and saw the thick, armored fuselage of Ambassador underneath her, and it made the situation more confusing. Had Ambassador teleported her here? It seemed likely, but why? For that matter, where was here?
She looked closer and noticed there was very little to actually see. All around them was nothing but a massive field of white stretching into the dark.
It was snow.
Guardian, Ambassador projected to her, sensing her movement. She flinched at how jarring a single projection was in her now quiet mind. It made her wonder how she possibly coped with the hundreds she did on a daily basis.
“Where are we?” she asked out loud.
The top.
“Of what?”
Your world.
It suddenly made sense. The snow, the giant wavering bands of color. They were at the north pole, and the bands were the aurora borealis. She stared back up at them in wonder, something she had never seen before, only heard and read about in another time and place.
The realization begged other questions.
Why isn’t it cold? she projected to Ambassador.
You are protected. Ambassador’s shield flickered briefly around her, lighting the night. It screened her from the environment as well and she was definitely thankful. Without it, she would be dead in minutes.
“Why are we here?”
For you, Ambassador replied. It is quiet.
Mira was instantly filled with tenderness for the alien. It meant the lack of projections from the others. Ambassador must have sensed her distress, come looking, and found her. It had brought her here. Maybe it did so only because it saw her as an asset for getting what it wanted, but Mira was grateful all the same. She could finally breathe … and it felt marvelous.
“I didn’t know the strain was so much,” she said.
Your mind is limited.
Mira frowned. “Thanks a lot.”
No insult is meant. Few could go as far.
“You act like I have a choice,” she said, lying back and staring at the colors above her again. They were beautiful. “You can only teleport places you’ve been, right? Or places other people have seen?”
Correct.
“So you’ve come here before.”
It is pleasing.
Mira had never heard an Assembly, in all the “conversations” she’d had with them now, express anything resembling an affection for something. It was surprising.
“You like it here.”
It has meaning.
Imagery exploded in her mind: only light, bright and pulsing and colorful, and she recognized where she was. It was what the Assembly called the Nexus, their life force, but this time she wasn’t looking at it from the outside, Ambassador was showing her the inside, an altogether different experience.
Colored energy surrounded and encompassed everything. Feelings of bliss and peace washed over her of a kind she’d never experienced. It was like … somehow being inside love. It felt amazing.
The interior of the Nexus, the colors and pulsing energy, bore a passing resemblance to the aurora above. No wonder Ambassador came here. It was for the same reason the other Assembly wanted her close to them: to feed off her mind, to sense the Nexus again through the memories that had been shared with her, if only dimly.
Mira breathed in sharply and opened her eyes suddenly, cutting off the imagery. The brief glimpse of actually being inside it, of the sensations and feelings, had left her with one clear impression, and it was shocking.
“The Nexus is … alive?” she asked.
Life comes from life.
“But it was so peaceful and serene, and you’re…” She stopped herself, but it was too late.
Neither, it finished for her. Mira sensed no insult … and no disagreement either. It is unfortunate.
“What?”
We indulge in the Nexus. We never learn from it.
Mira thought she understood. The Nexus was an answer to whatever had plagued the Assembly its entire existence, but, for whatever reason, they didn’t see it.
“Most times,” Mira admitte
d, “humans have the same problem.”
She watched the colors above, thinking how odd it was that she was so at ease, lying on top of an Assembly combat walker, having an intimate conversation. A year ago it would have seemed insane, not to mention a betrayal, but not now. Ambassador had become a confidant, though she wasn’t sure it was a mutual sentiment. She wasn’t really sure the alien had the ability to feel something like kinship, but she was glad it was here all the same.
“When you’re … ‘Ascended,’ or whatever,” Mira said, curious. “What will it be like?”
We do not understand.
“The experience, for you, what will it be like? Are you, I don’t know … transformed? What will you feel? And see? I mean, will you still be you?”
We will be who we are. Not who we want.
Mira smiled. It was funny how used to Ambassador’s cryptic answers she’d become. “You’re not who you are now?”
Most resist.
“But you’re different?”
The alien hesitated, a rare moment where it formulated its thoughts. Usually its answers were nearly instantaneous.
Few see things as they are. The Scion will ascend us. Show us the truth. Then all will see.
Mira sighed. “If we can get there.”
You doubt?
“On a daily basis.” It was the kind of thing she could only tell Ambassador. From it, however, she felt a strange response. Confusion.
The more you achieve. The more you doubt yourself. A human quality?
It was a very good question. “Maybe so.”
They both watched the aurora again, the beauty of it, the way it shimmered and bounced. It was a special place, she saw why Ambassador came here.
Do you have special places?
“Of course.”
Show us.
It took a moment to realize what Ambassador was asking. It was offering to take her anywhere she wanted, and from the machine she sensed an eagerness. It was intrigued to know what moved her. It was only fair, she supposed. Ambassador had shared something with her, after all.
But where to go? There were many options.
The Oregon beach where her family had gone every summer and her father had taught her to bodysurf. Parts of the Strange Lands she had never reached. Maybe there were still artifacts there to collect. Landmarks, like the aurora borealis above, famous ones she had never seen. Midnight City, where she had come of age, where she had found her path and her first home. Then again, an Assembly combat walker teleporting into the Scorewall room probably wasn’t the best idea.
Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) Page 27
