“We could be the first…”
“Many people have said what you’re about to say. Many designed craft to carry them far beyond the horizon. Not one has ever returned.”
“We could be the…”
“I know this because I’ve seen their trees grow over the years.” With an annoyed face she glanced back through the cockpit glass at Catcher’s chip sticking up in the dash. She turned back toward the horizon, stared at the clouds, and the cliff where they currently stood. “We could start to the east, near Ellos even. Compare maps with the local cartographer and imprint them on to…”
Watching the clouds roll toward the horizon, Margo leaned against Pipsqueak. “This cannot be it. The map shows there is more to the south east.” She shielded her eyes from the sun and shook her head. “It’s gotta be…” An idea struck Margo and as it nested in her mind a grin grew. “I know what we can do.”
Margo hopped into the cockpit, threw on her helmet, and ignited the engine. It purred to life with a quiet hum. “I’m glad you are seeing sense. It’s a sign of maturity, which is, of course, what The Path of Roads helps to forge.” Pipsqueak lifted off the orange earth and swung up and over the cliff face of Point Echo. “Margo, what are you doing?”
Her smile seemed crazed but her green eyes focused on the mystery beyond the clouds below. “I’m going on an adventure!” She dipped the nose of the gyrocopter down, punched the accelerator, and made the small craft cut into the thick clouds at the base of the cliff.
A swarming sea of gray whirled around the glass canopy of the cockpit. Margo’s eyes were locked dead ahead as her hands and feet pitched and yawed Pipsqueak around in the cloudy soup that surrounded the craft. She pulled back on the speed as a spire of rock leaped from the darkness, narrowly missing the gyro. “Perhaps we should slow down.”
“You’re worried about speed at a time like this? Pull up!”
“No risk no reward. You and Dad taught me that.”
“Suicide has no reward!”
Margo weaved past the natural structures, utilizing her honed reflexes, and the compact design of Pipsqueak to make it through the gauntlet. Even with their slowed descent, the rock formations jutted out of the thick mist like phantoms in a darkened house. Grasping, clawing, seemingly trying to stop the little gyro.
“Do you think there’s a bottom?”
Catcher’s voice calmly cut through the noise in the cockpit. “Ease off the throttle.” Margo’s gloved hand pulled back on the power lever and leveled off the craft into a hovering mode. “I know you are excited for this moment in your life, but putting our lives at risk is stupid! The comment caused her eyebrows to immediately furrow. “Oh, don’t like being called that? In this moment you are acting stupidly and it will get you clattered just like that wreck outside the window.” She glanced left and saw the remains of another craft. The design was old, much older than Pipsqueak, and it was clear the wreckage had met with a violent end on the outcropping. “I have no problem traversing this soup, we have the equipment to make it easier, but could we at least exercise some caution? Perhaps by going a little slower?”
A tinge of regret pulled at Margo’s face. “Perhaps, you are right. I… only want to show the map is real. To show Dad that this is real. Maybe then the Eight might withdraw their ruling on us. I just don’t think there is any danger in this cloud formation other than the geography, which you have pointed out is easily avoided by simply slowing do…”
The A.I.’s voice held a tinge of panic as he cut off his pilot, “Margo, hit the accelerator.”
“But didn’t you just get through…”
“Hit it now!”
She punched the throttle open, cleared the jutting rocks, and dipped over the edge into the swirling void. “Why am I doing the thing you were yelling at me about two seconds ago?”
“Because before the sensors didn’t read a big object moving toward us!”
“How big?”
“It’s a house!”
In the HUD that was being projected onto the domed cockpit, a readout showed a large volumetric disturbance in the clouds twenty meters above them. Margo’s eyes grew in controlled horror as she crested another stone spire. “Confirmed, house is not an exaggeration.”
“When do I exaggerate?!”
“Put this conversation on hold, need to concentrate right now.” As she finished her sentence, a bellowing roar rattled the gyro and caused Margo’s face to go blank. “Must go faster.” She threw the throttle to full, accelerating their dive through the grey sea. Making the altimeter spin relentlessly and as the numbers in the instrument fell the swirling gray void outside began to thin out. The formless mountain they were racing began to gain features as hints of color popped and tore through the cloud coverage until Pipsqueak burst out of the mysterious haze. Margo’s goggles shaded instantly as the sunlight beamed across the horizon and took the two occupants by surprise.
“Margo, the creature, it stopped.” Her hands instinctively began to pull the craft out of its dive and eased back on the flight stick. As the gyro leveled out, Margo looked up through the top of the glass canopy to see a giant set of scaled fins skim the edge of the cloud coverage and disappear back into the shifting gray atmosphere. A sigh of relief was exhaled by both occupants. “I guess it lives in that sea of clouds.”
The clouds bubbled and shifted overhead like the constantly disturbed surface of a pond. “Neato.” Margo lowered her goggles as her eyes followed the sea of clouds toward the horizon and met the blazing orange sun. Its beams lanced through a vast valley of stone spires capped with trees that were wrapped at their bases with mist. Her voice and gaze were filled with awe as she whispered, “Neato.”
Chapter 4- Bang
“This is certainly surprising.”
“I’m not crazy! The map is real!”
“We are A-class explorers now, Margo!”
The two cheered in unison and as the high of discovery wore off Margo glanced at their new environment. “Is that mist stuff around the spires like the clouds we dove through? Meaning, will monsters be living in it?”
“Let’s see.” A port under Pipsqueak opened; a round tube fell from it and into the mist. Seconds passed, and from the white puffy clouds the worn chrome tube emerged on a return course back to the ship after sprouting a pair of tiny rotor blades. After it entered the port from which it came, the console that Catcher was plugged into began to process the data from the probe. A resounding ding signaled the analysis was complete. “It’s normal water vapor, nothing like the mass we dove through from Point Echo. There shouldn't be any large-scale creatures in it either.”
“Great!” Margo excitedly pulled her goggles on and gazed at the world around her. She looked at the monitor displaying a digitized version of the map she was trying to update. It showed her approximate location based off the mapping data she had inputted from Artsiv’s cartography library. Her current location showed she was pointing toward the central continent. She scratched her head. “Where to?”
“I dunno, you’re the pilot, and there are no points of interest in my memory. It’s your choice.”
She nodded reassuringly and pointed her gloved hand toward the horizon. “That way.”
Catcher inputted the direction into the map on the screen and earnestly replied, “Then away we go!”
Pipsqueak’s engine began to hum as its blades whirled faster and pulled the small gyrocopter forward. Soaring through the foreign skies, Margo gently passed and glided by the large rock spires. Usually she would be keeping an eye on her instruments, making sure nothing was out of the ordinary, but she couldn’t be bothered in this moment. Wonder and relief flooded her mind as she looked around this fantastic place.
She’d been right, the map was true, the weight of doubt had fallen off her shoulders. In her small gyro, she felt like a bird rather than a girl surrounded by a machine. Her eyes bolted open as a flock of long neck birds took flight from a spire to her left. “Birds!”
“Get closer, let’s see if we can’t document them!”
Margo opened up the throttle and began to catch up to the creatures. As the duo neared their targets, the details of the birds began to form. Their necks were long and scaly while their bodies were a mixture of green and grey feathers. Their short gold beaks had a patch of red plumage around the edge where it connected to their heads. They were the size of Pipsqueak. “They’re massive!”
“Yes, definitely bigger than your average Tokk back home. I wonder why they’re so big?”
The flock’s blue eyes looked at their new visitor with the same curiosity. They glided and flapped around the craft, avoiding the spinning blades, as they studied the metal creature that was rattling around their airspace.
With another look of happy inquisition on her face she asked, “Since we found them, does that mean we can name them?”
“Barring any animal society in the area already naming these Tokks, yes, that is within our right.”
“You think they are from the Tokk family?”
“It’s a guess, but one that I think fits best. They share a similar bill and body shape.”
Margo thought on this very pressing issue as the spires below them began to fade into rolling hills and then a cliff face that dropped off into a green valley. The mist that clung to the spires spilled over the edges of the cliff face, as if it was trying to reach out to the flock and the metal bird in accompaniment while they soared over the new geography below. She snapped her gloved fingers together as the name popped into her head. “They shall be known as Tokk Tokk, since they are twice the size of a normal Tokk.” A moment passed where the hum of the gyros engine overtook the cabin. “Catcher, you okay?”
“If I had lungs, I’d sigh right now.”
“Okay?”
“Your Structor of Biology, Tenor Light, would be extremely disappointed right now. Tokk Tokk?”
“It’s not my fault that class was boring!”
“I will not have the first creature be named in such a lazy fashion. Take a moment and think about this a bit.”
“Why are you being so touchy on this?”
“Once this name is recorded, any child that sees this creature must call it this name. It should not be a simple…”
A glazed look of annoyance grew on Margo’s face and she interrupted the lecture. “This member of the Tokk family shall be known as a Gruff Neck Popper.” She stared at visible half of the center circle and the top circle of Catcher’s crystalline chip. “Not hearing any protesting.”
“Could you think about it some…”
“No, you’re killing the joy of this moment. Going back to being in awe. Log it.” She waved at the birds, pulled away from the flock, and then noticed the geography had changed below. “Spires are gone.”
“Yes, I noticed that. We left the Stone Forest a few minutes ago.”
“Stone Forest, I like that.”
The excitement couldn’t be hidden from the voice of the A.I. as the blue light in his chip fluxed, “I found it very apropos.”
“Catcher, can you take over?”
“Calling your father?”
“Yes, he ought to know what’s going on.”
“Okay, but…” She flipped down the keyboard and brought the video messaging service only to find it didn’t carry a signal. She tapped the side of the monitor. “Yes, that’ll fix it.”
“Hitting electronics has been known to work.”
“I think our problem is the fact that there is a rolling cloud sea with living creatures in it that somehow defies all the known laws of this planet. That might be what’s stopping a connection from happening.”
Flipping the toggle switch on top, she found while the video was unusable the beam messaging got a signal. “Ha! I can at least beam a message out.” As she pulled up a new message, she found there was one sitting in her inbox already from Nane. She opened it:
Margo,
Where in all the six points are you?! The Eight sent security forces to your house and your Dad said you’ve run away? Why didn’t you tell me you were planning on bolting? Did you go after the map? Are you a ghost now?!
Do not haunt me if you’re a ghost!
Margo began to giggle, but the moment was cut short as a loud bang popped the air inside the cabin. Alarms began to go off as the main top rotor began to sputter and lose speed. The nose of the small aircraft began to point down toward the valley. “Catcher!”
“The core is leaking! We’re losing pressure and speed.”
She quickly folded away the keyboard as her eyes instinctually checked the gauges only to find all of them were wildly fluctuating and flashing red. Her gloved hands quickly took hold of the flight controls. “I got it!”
“Pull the emergency chute Margo!”
“No way! We’ll make this work!” Her hands began to pump the throttle and upon seeing that there was no response, she killed the engine. The altimeter began to whirl as the valley floor grew ever closer. Her stomach flopped as her body felt as if it was starting to float. Keeping her eyes focused on finding a clearing, she spotted an opening among the ancient trees. The engine sputtered back to life as Margo pulled back on the stick and arched the gyro in a large left turn; using the boost of speed from the engine to complete the landing sequence. As Pipsqueak straightened out over the clearing, she pulled the throttle back and tilted the blades of the gyro back.
The small craft hit the ground hard on its landing gear, jarring its passenger, and rattling into silence.
Margo shook her head and quickly looked at the A.I. chip sticking out of the dashboard. “Catcher!”
“Still here. You?”
“Yeah, same. Though my neck...”
“Never mind the aches, let’s get out of here. Assess the damage.”
“The altimeter says we’re at -566.” She pressed the two buttons on the sides and the numbers flipped to 0. She nodded toward the dial. “One less thing to fix.”
“Wonderful.”
Margo reached in the side compartment and pulled out the blue travel box. She then removed Catcher from the console and plugged him in. A single camera lens on the side of the blue plastic box focused as Margo unlatched the cockpit canopy and stepped outside.
A cool breeze blew on her sweaty neck as Margo's short black hair brushed against her face. The sound of a million leaves rustling in the wind greeted the duo as the tree line swayed just a few meters away.
She smiled. “All in all, not the worst place to crash land.”
“Thank the Eight we weren’t near a volcano.”
A flock of birds took off from the treeline at some distance, catching Margo’s eye. “Hey, it’s a flock of Gruff Neck Poppers.”
“Are there? Popular bird for only being in existence for five minutes.”
Margo hopped out of the cockpit and walked toward the core. “What do you think went wrong?”
“Scanning.” The small blue box began to whirl as a blue beam scanned over the wounded body of Pipsqueak. “Initial analysis shows the engine failed after it was struck by a foreign object.”
“Foreign object?”
“Yes, plug me into the diagnostic port.” Margo slid Catcher out of the blue box and into the port on the core compartment. “I’ll see what this foreign object was.”
She glanced over at the cockpit. “Catcher, transfer some power to the control panel.” Hopping inside Pipsqueak the gauges and electronics turned on. Margo folded down the keyboard and as she placed her hand on it the familiar whirr of the electronics stopped. She glanced back at the A.I. chip sticking out of the side of the core. “I wasn’t finished yet.”
“I didn’t stop it. It appears that some connections were broken during our landing. You’ll have to use the comm gun if you want to send a message until we’ve repaired them.”
“Blast!” Margo exited the cockpit, moved toward the storage box, and opened it. Pushing past the various supplies, she found the comm gun strapped to the inside of the box. Befo
re grabbing it she noticed the imcap was sitting next to it. Taking lens in hand and the frame, she noticed that they were cracked in half. “Aw, no images Catcher. It cracked.”
“Then we’ll have to remember as much as we can.”
Setting the imcap aside, she pulled out the comm gun, and using the dial on the back of it navigated the menus to start a new message:
To: Dad
Landed. Dad, the map is real! Went through Point Echo clouds. It’s a whole new world! Safe. Will message again soon!
She then raised the blocky looking gun toward the sun, dialed in the light frequency, and braced herself as she pulled the trigger. A green beam of light shot out of the barrel and toward the horizon, pushing her off balance, and making her shake her head. “I’ve always found these portables to be clunky.”
“They work in a pinch.”
“I didn’t tell Dad what happened.”
“No, not till we truly need him should we alert him. We barely made it through that cloud sea. We’re probably the first.” That line made a shiver of pride go down Margo’s back. “Now let’s see what we can see.” Blue lines inside the core of the engine began to glow. The hole that punched through the solid alloyed shell began to reveal itself. Margo’s gloved hand neared the glowing hole. “Margo, get the Girsh.”
It was a set of words that she wasn’t expecting to hear. “What?”
“Get the rifle. What punctured the engine wall was a bullet.”
Margo felt electric as her system was flooded with adrenaline. She moved toward the storage locker, knelt down, opened it, and heard the sound of a gun cocking behind her.
Chapter 5- The Soldier
“Don’t move...” Catcher whispered, “...it has the drop on us.”
“It?” Margo whispered back.
“It’s a robot of some make, odd looking, single big eye and it’s wearing an…”
The robot’s modulated voice cut through the quiet conversation and the rustling of the valley’s swaying trees. Its voice was making noises that sounded like speech, “Hoerth, tsbs tu aspon.” Margo began to stand slowly, and with her hands in plain view, slowly turned around. The robot was as Catcher had described. It had a single large glowing red eye that took up a majority of the space on its cylindrical head. Its weather beaten and long brimmed cowboy hat gave the eye a sinister gaze as it repeated, “Hoerth, tsbs tu aspon.” It raised a hefty looking revolver up in its three-fingered hand.
Margo Flint and the Last Soldier Page 3
