Gaia's Brood

by Nick Travers

  Chapter 51

  The first shot is followed, in quick succession, by a second, from my left. I hear Borker cry out, the sound of a body crumple to the ground, and running feet.

  Cautiously, I peer over the side of the box. Borker is lying on the floor of the cavern. A small puff of dust hangs over his lifeless body, thrown up by his fall. Blood, lots of blood, soaks into the dirt. Borker is dead.

  On the opposite side, Trent is gone. A flash of movement among the terraced houses has three of Eve’s ninjas chasing in hot pursuit. A constable stares helplessly at her empty gun holster.

  Casually, Eve draws her own gun and points it at the hapless constable. “Idiot,” she mutters, “that was my champion agent, my assassin, my knight.” She shoots the constable dead without a flicker of emotion. I guess she doesn’t suffer incompetence.

  I am shocked by the casual manner in which she murders the constable—obviously she has done this many times before. Maybe it’s not the project sucking the life from her soul. Maybe she is psychotic. Maybe she did me a favor when she left all those years ago. The thought of such a monster guiding me through my childhood makes me shudder. Whatever her motivation, she is clearly past redemption, and I am better getting as far away from her as I can.

  “Now, Nina.” Eve holsters her weapon. “We need to get you some clothes and talk about your future, with me in the Gaia Foundation.”

  “So why construct a fake journal and a fake crash?” Scud asks suddenly from the back of the crowd where he is now flanked by two constables. The mystery of the journal must be eating him up from inside. To Scud, all mysteries are logical. Any that are not, bother him to the extent that he loses sleep worrying about them.

  Eve Swift doesn’t even bother to look at him. I’m sure Scud it relieved, but ignoring my best friend bothers the hell out of me.

  I raise my eyebrows and incline my head, I want an answer too. “I think Scud asked you a question, Mother.”

  “The journal,” Eve returns stiffly, “was devised as a way to lure you here without alerting the authorities, especially the Science Guild. However, once we had the genes of the White Woman we no longer required you.”

  “Which you planted on Felix, then tried to retrieve,” Izzy says.

  Two constables struggle to contain Izzy as she surges towards Eve, fury plastered across her face. Fernando tries to intervene, but he too is restrained. Izzy only stops struggling when Gaia’s acolytes raise their weapons.

  “Did you murder him,” Izzy spits. “Or did you order one of your lackeys to do it? Either way, you are responsible.

  Eve looks alarmed at Izzy’s aggression.

  “My cousin, Isabelle Swift,” I say by way of explanation. “Your brother was her father.”

  “Oh, I see. A regrettable incident.” Eve stops to swallow. “Lieutenant Borker could be a bit over enthusiastic in his devotion sometimes, as you have just witnessed.”

  Was it the flicker of her eyes, the swallow, or the inflection of her voice? I know she is lying, and I’m not the only one.

  “That’s a lie,” Scud accuses. He hate lies with a loathing bordering on the paranoid. “Borker was on New Frisco when Uncle Felix died. I know—I saw him. We all saw him—in the Square Balloon cafe. All you had to do was show yourself to Uncle Felix and there was no reason for him to send the journal. But he wouldn’t tell you where it was, so you killed him with a Krys-knife to incriminate the assassins, and ransacked the place. But the journal wasn’t there, so your only option was to set up a fake crash and hope Nina turned back before she revealed your hideout to Microtough.”

  I feel a rush of affection as Scud refers to Felix as his Uncle—as far as Scud is concerned, my family is just an extension of his family.

  Without warning, the drone of airship engines fills the cavern. At the first hint of sound, I whirl around to see the Shonti Bloom backing into the entrance of the cavern. Trent holds her steady with the engines and uses the giant whale tail to stir up the dust of the cavern floor into a blinding fog.

  Trent has returned to save us. I make to get up, but a blade sticks into the side of my throat—one of Eve’s acolytes.

  “Stay close to our guests. Kill them if they try to escape. Shout out if you are attacked!” Eve instructs, hidden by the dust.

  We wait anxiously for something to happen. Nothing. No movement, no sound—other than the buzz of the engines and the swoosh of the Shonti’s tail sweeping up the dust. Trent is waiting for us, and we are stuck here—each individually captive, unable to see each other, unable to work as a team.

  Trent doesn’t wait long, wary, no doubt, of an attack by Eve’s ninjas. When we don’t make a break for it, the Shonti disappears with a few great sweeps of its flukes. And with the retreating airship goes the dust, drawn out of the cavern to spiral upward like a smoke signal.

  “Open fire!” Eve screams. “Get after that airship. Take him out before he brings the Microtough fleet down on us!” The Shonti Bloom is already sprinting out of artillery range. Three airships are dispatched to catch her, but with such a head start I doubt they will succeed. Go Shonti, go.

  I put my hand back down into Leanne’s box and it lands on something cold and hard in the bottom. A gun. How could I have missed it? I could have sworn it wasn’t there a moment ago. Thank you stitch. Perhaps I can use all the activity as a cover.

  I know I don’t have the strength for what is required. No way can I shoot dead my own mother. Izzy would, in revenge for her father’s death, but she is too far away. There is only one person near enough to do the deed. And set us free.

  “Jack,” I shout, and throw the gun, in a looping arc towards him.

  Eve and some of her entourage spin around at the sound, but Jack is quick and has the gun levelled before anyone realizes what is going on.

  “Jack, point the gun at my mother.”

  But Jack keeps the gun unwaveringly on me.

  “I have chased Miss Nina Slippery Swift across half the known world,” Jack declares. “ And I’m not going to lose her now. Any attempt to stop me, and I kill her.”

  Eve gives a hollow laugh. “A brave but empty gesture. I have the White Woman?”

  Jack grins like a cat that has caught the bird. “Are you sure? That stretcher look mighty empty to me.”

  Suddenly, Eve’s smile disappears and I, like everyone else, focus on the white sheet laying suspiciously flat on the stretcher. Trent didn’t return for me. He used the cover of the dust cloud to snatch back Leanne. Now I am the only route for Eve to achieve her fertility goal.

  Jack drags me backwards. “Okay, now everyone understands the stakes, we are leaving.” Jack’s remaining loyal constable has already twisted free of his captors and taken the gun. “Take Miss Swift’s crew,” Jack instructs, and the constable herds Scud, Fernando, and Izzy towards the exit.

  Eve takes a step forward, but stops as Jack grinds the gun into my temple. “She’s as good to me dead as alive, young man.”

  “If that were true, you would have killed us both already. I reckon she is much more use to you alive than dead. At least this way, everyone lives to fight another day. Who knows, Nina might even have children and start her own breeding program.”

  “Nina” Eve looks directly at me. “You can break free. Think of the things we can achieve together. We can be a team, friends, a family.”

  Shame she got the order wrong, but by now that should come as no surprise.

  “Nina, I love you.” She even manages to look anguished.

  I’m not buying it. “The only thing you’re capable of loving, Mother, is your cause. I’m just an experiment,” I spit back, as Jack continues to walk us towards the door. “Technically, I’m not even your daughter. Just a clone. Except I’m not you. I don’t share your values and I’m not wedded to you evil cause.

  “I’m your Mother, Nina.”

  I think of Scud, Izzy, Fernando, and Auntie Jean. “I got friends, family even, who love me for who I am, not what I am.”
>
  We come to the base of the airship tower. My crew is herded up first. Then Jacks walks us backwards up the spiral stairs. Eve and her entourage follow behind at a safe distance. This procession is even more bizarre than the one that came down the tower such a short time ago.

  I hardly notice. I’m in full flow, unable to stop years of emotions bursting forth. “I despise you, Mother. I despise what you do; I despise what you are. I don’t need you, Mother. And I certainly…” My voice chokes up. “I certainly don’t love you.”

  We reach the top of the stairs. My crew is already on board one of the airships abandoned by Borker and his constables. McGraw and I back up the gangway and stand on deck in full view of everyone.

  The ship rises, and as it does, Eve runs forward. “Nina, don’t go! I need you.” She reaches up towards me with her left hand, holding aloft a small metal object. “Take this!”

  I reach over the rail towards her. She is my mother. The mother I’ve always wanted, the mother from whom I have always crave love. Now, at the last, she is reaching out to me—a crumb of acknowledgement, a crumb of love. My heart racing, I eagerly reach for the offered trinket. “Thank you, Mother.”

  Then I freeze, with my left hand outstretched. The object she is holding aloft is the fake brass watch.

  Before I can react, pain lances through my outstretched arm. Instinctively, I snatch it back, but that only increases the searing pain. Claws, like steel talons, attached to the fingers of Eve’s right hand, are sunk deep into my outstretched limb. Great strips of flesh are gouged from by my left arm and hand as we both pull away. Blood flows freely, splattering over Eve’s icy features. Triumphantly, she holds up the dripping mass clotted under the talons.

  My mother has taken all she ever wanted from me: my genes, contained in the soggy mass of flesh she holds aloft.

  I feel faint as I watch the blood gush down my arm. Jack McGraw pulls me back away from the side as the ship rises out of reach. Clear as a bell, I hear my mother give an order to her followers.

  “Now you can shoot them down!”