Flood City

by Daniel José Older

  “You got him,” Effie said. Dante swerved back out into the center, listening to the man slide down the wall into the pit below.

  “He dead?” Dante asked.

  “Just hurt, I think.”

  “Okay.”

  “But the other one’s close on us, D. We better go.”

  Dante nodded. He didn’t know how much longer he could last without smashing into a wall. From the sound of those approaching jetboots, the Baron was only a few feet away and gaining fast. Plus he had the advantage of not having a little girl strapped to his back. Also, he could see.

  “Right!” Effie screamed into his ear, and Dante rounded a corner, barely missing another wall. Suddenly a thick hand wrapped around his left ankle. He yelled and tried to kick at it with his right foot, but his weight was all messed up from the sudden shift in balance.

  “Effie, can you pry his fingers loose?”

  Effie glanced over her shoulder, saw the angry eyes glaring back at her, and then almost lost her grip when a flash of light burst out of nowhere and enveloped the man holding her brother’s leg.

  “What happened?” Dante asked, slowing down.

  “The man,” Effie said. “He blew up.”

  “Hello, young ones.” An old man with a thick mustache and big wrinkly smile jetted out from a trash-strewn corner. He carried a long weapon of some kind over his shoulder. “Comandante Cortinas of the Flood City Rebel Guerrilla Squad at your service. You want to tell me why that angry man was chasing you?”

  “What should we do?” Max whispered.

  “We could go the other way,” Djinna said, but she looked doubtful. “Do you think they already know we’re here?”

  “Probably, we were making enough noise.”

  “There’s a turnoff up there, looks like it leads to another corridor. We could try and make it.”

  The steps suddenly broke into a run. Max saw a shadow stretching toward them along the dimly lit piping. A short, older man with thick sideburns appeared around the corner. He had been scowling, but when he saw Max and Djinna, his mouth dropped open and his eyes got wide. For a second, the three of them just stared at one another across the corridor. Then the man turned around and ran. “Intruders!” he yelled. “Launch the pods!” His words echoed up and down the hallway.

  Max and Djinna looked at each other. They had come to the crashed cruiser to stop the Barons from nuking Flood City. The impending destruction of everything Max loved in the world was enough to wipe away almost all sense of caution from his mind. That, plus he was staring into Djinna’s eyes and they seemed to be on fire with the thrill of adventure. Then she actually smiled, a wicked, confident grin—something akin to the one she’d given when Max had first broken out into the wild horn solo. Max turned down the hall, jumped up into the air, and launched after the man in a fiery burst of jetboot flame.

  Tog’s voice was scratchy over the intercom. “ArchBaron Mephim!”

  “What is it, Apix?”

  “Someone’s on the ship, Baron!” He had to pause to catch his breath. “Someone’s—” There was an explosion of static. Tog could be heard yelling on the other end of the line and then it got very quiet.

  Mephim turned to Get and Sak. “Get to your pods. We leave now.” He didn’t yell, but there was enough threat and authority in his voice for Get to jump into his pod without another word.

  “Are you sure they’re ready to … ?” Sak started to say. Mephim shot him a look and he shut up and disappeared into the hatch.

  “Now what do we do?” Djinna said.

  They’d caught the guy off guard and it had been easier than either of them had expected to take him down. He’d fought back a little, but eventually Max had pinned each arm down, and after a little squirming the Baron had realized there was no escape.

  “We gotta get to those escape pods,” Max said.

  “Obviously. But I mean, what are we gonna do with him?”

  “Just get off me,” Tog moaned. “I’ll be good.”

  “You shut up,” Djinna snapped. “How ’bout you stay here with this dude and I go see about the nuke?”

  “Alone?”

  “What—you don’t think I can go at it alone cuz I’m a girl?”

  Max stood up. “I didn’t say that, Djinna!”

  “You implied it.”

  “No, what I meant was—”

  Tog stumbled to his feet and swung a haphazard fist toward Max. Djinna was there before Max could react. She intercepted Tog’s punch with one hand and then spun her whole body around and dropped him with a swift kick to the head. Tog lay in a crumpled heap at her feet.

  Max looked at Djinna with awe in his eyes. “Wow.”

  “We don’t have time for all that, Max. C’mon.”

  A dim red light glowed in the engine room. Pipes and air ducts crisscrossed the walls around a massive control panel. About a billion little screens glared above it, most of them full of numbers and diagrams of the ship.

  “There!” Djinna said, pointing to the far wall. “Oh no!”

  The little cove in the wall was open. The nuke was gone.

  The escape pod hangar was deserted. Tog Apix’s tools lay scattered around the floor, along with some greasy rags and a can of engine fuel. He’d left in a hurry, probably to get some supplies. Which meant he’d be back any minute, along with whatever Barons were still alive. And Mephim …

  Ato bolted out of the corridor, stepped around the tools, and jumped headfirst into one of the three escape pods. Inside, the cushiony seat took up most of the cramped space. Two control sticks poked up from the floor in front of it, and a screen displayed the horizon line within a series of circles. If he could destroy the control sticks, the pod would be … A door slid open somewhere nearby. Ato ducked into the tiny crawl space behind the seat and held his breath.

  “Everyone out!” Mephim’s voice yelled. “Someone’s boarded the cruiser. Get in the pods and head out immediately!”

  Footsteps stormed toward the pods. Ato cringed. Someone got in, their weight pushing the seat back against Ato. The door slid shut with a whir and then the whole ship rumbled as the pod igniters burst to life. Ato peeked up at the figure in the seat and almost gasped. It was Get.

  The pod shivered and then burst up into the sky.

  Max and Djinna ran into the pod hangar to find three empty slots.

  “We’re too late,” Max gasped.

  “No we’re not,” Djinna said. She swung around and sprinted back down the corridor.

  Max hurried after her. “What do you mean?”

  “Those pods don’t have much push.” She was already halfway up the ladder. “They gotta get at least a mile over the city to nuke it without getting hit themselves.” She crawled out through the hatch and reached down for Max as he scrambled after her. “And we have shiolyders. We can get within firing range and knock them off course before they reach a mile.”

  “And then slide on into Plan B,” Max said. “Brilliant!”

  Djinna had already leapt into the sky and ignited her jetboots.

  The pods were fist-size bursts of flame against the darkening clouds. Max had never pushed his jetboots to their full acceleration, mostly because the Flood City streets were too windy and crowded for that kind of speed, but he’d always wondered just how fast they could go. The rush of air against his face felt incredible. He closed his eyes for a second, allowing the sudden jolt of speed to settle with his body, and when he opened them, the escape pods were much closer than they had been before.

  “We’re gaining!” he shouted.

  “I know!” Djinna yelled. “You ready, Max?” Djinna zoomed up alongside him. She unholstered her shiolyder.

  Max nodded and took his own out. It was heavy and he had to readjust his balance some. “You think Ato’s in one of ’em?”

  “Gotta be,” Djinna said. “But he’ll be alright. The blasts will just throw them off course and give us a chance to sabotage ’em.”

  The shiolyder had a wide mo
uth, which Max was grateful for because he didn’t think precision would be his strong point while hurtling upward at about a bajillion miles an hour. He pointed it at the nearest escape pod and pulled the trigger. A beam of light burst out across the dark blue sky and Max hurtled off to the side.

  When he recovered, he saw the pod had been tossed laterally and was wobbling in jerky circles. “It worked!” Max yelled.

  “Nice one,” Djinna said. “Just ease up on the accelerators next time so the pushback doesn’t knock you so far off course.”

  “Gotchya!”

  “We’re not in the clear yet,” Djinna said. She was racing after one of the other pods, shiolyder at the ready.

  “What is it?” Max asked.

  “That pod on the right, Max! It’s … glowing!”

  “What?” Two pods remained. The one on the right pulsed with a sickening green glow. “Maybe it’s from the nuke somehow! And that other one is way ahead. I don’t know if we’re gonna catch them in time!” He blasted full power toward them.

  “That’s not all,” Djinna said, slowing her jets. “There’s a ship coming.”

  A massive Star Guard transporter had warped into the sky and was bearing down on them.

  Ato had been holding his breath again. The front of the pod was a dome of glass, which meant the entire sky opened up around them as the clouds sped past on either side and Earth got farther and farther away. Get’s brow furrowed as he pushed hard on the engine blasters and swung the control sticks back and forth, trying to stay level.

  Ato would have to jump him. It shouldn’t be hard—he had the element of surprise—but still: It was a tight space and there was no telling how things would go. He was about to stand when a tiny version of Max materialized in the air beside Get.

  “Ato? Can you hear me? Listen, man,” holo-Max yelled over the screaming wind.

  “What the—?” Get grunted, spinning around in the seat. He saw Ato and scowled, swinging at him. Ato threw himself over his brother, crashing them both back into the chair.

  “I dunno where you are,” Max went on, oblivious. “But if you’re anywhere near that pod on the right, we think it has Mephim and the nuke on board. You gotta smash it or something! We’re too far back. Oh, and there’s, uh, a Star Guard transporter bearing down on us too, so yeah … watch out for that. Wherever you are.”

  Get freed a hand and cracked Ato across the face. It wasn’t a very hard hit—he had no room to wind up—but it caught Ato off guard and he reeled back, stunned. Get shoved him backward and pounced, pinning him to the rounded glass. The lights of Flood City seemed to spin circles around them, and then the open sky. In the corner of his eye, Ato glimpsed the pod Max had described, a speeding splotch that glowed green against the night.

  “Ato, man, come to your senses,” Get said, still holding him fast against the front of the pod. His eyes looked sad, scared, the way they had when he’d admitted how terrified he was going out on missions. Ato thought his brother might be about to cry. “I know the ArchBaron’s messed up, Ato.”

  “You do?”

  Get nodded. “We can stop him together. We can make things better on the base fleet. Together. The way we do everything.”

  The base fleet. Home. Ato had wiped the idea of going home out of his mind entirely—it was too painful and totally impossible. But with Get on his side, maybe …

  “We just have to reason with him. With all of them.”

  “Reason?”

  “They’re old and out of touch, but they’ll hear us out if we stay on ’em. I know they will. And if not, we can work the system and outmaneuver them politically. We’re Barons too, after all. We’ll be grown in a few years and—”

  “Years?” Ato blurted out. “Get, there’s an ArchBaron about to drop a nuke on Flood City now!”

  “He wouldn’t,” Get said. “He’s mean, but he’s not that—”

  “And you want to reason with him?”

  “I mean …”

  “And you think it’s just him? They’re all like that up there, Get. Mom and Dad would probably shake their heads and be kinda disappointed, but that’s it. They don’t care about Earth or any of the people down there. They just care about themselves. You can’t reason with that.”

  Get’s eyes narrowed. “Either way, I’m not gonna let you get us both killed by attacking an ArchBaron, Ato. No way.”

  Any second, Mephim would drop that nuke and annihilate Flood City. The two brothers locked eyes and Ato thought about the world below him, this strange, crooked place of survivors who had embraced him even though he was their sworn enemy. He thought about the way everyone up on the base fleet was pale like him and everyone down on Earth was brown, about the textbook saying the Barons had caused the Floods, killed billions of people, and Max’s shrugged acceptance of it, and how Max somehow still had room in his heart for someone like Ato, even after all that death. Ato glared into his brother’s eyes and headbutted him with all his might.

  “Ah!” Get yelled, splaying backward with his hands over his shattered nose. Blood streamed down his face. He lurched at Ato, fist pulled back for another hit.

  And stopped. His wide eyes looked past Ato’s head to Mephim’s pod. “It’s …” His mouth dropped open.

  Ato turned. Mephim’s pod glowed with a sickly, menacing green. “Whoa …”

  “He’s mad,” Get said. “He’s really gone mad, hasn’t he?”

  Ato looked back at his brother, who was now cradling his nose again. “I think he always has been.”

  “But he’s … he’s Mephim. He’s an Arch. How …”

  “We have to do something,” Ato said. “Or a lot of people are going to die.”

  Get’s fist opened. He slumped backward into the chair. “He k-killed a whole family. Almost a whole family. And he wanted me to kill two of the kids but I couldn’t … I mean, they jumped me before I could but I don’t think I—”

  “Get,” Ato said. “Move over. We have to stop him. Now.”

  Get looked up, his eyes flush with tears. “You’re right!” He shoved the control stick all the way to one side and the pod swung hard. A horrible crack sounded and both Get and Ato were thrown to the side. Ato crawled into the pilot’s seat. Mephim’s pod still sailed along beside them, glowing bright green.

  “Again!” Get yelled.

  The escape pod was not built for tall, angley people like Mephim, and it was making him sweat. And now Get’s pod was crashing against his. To top it off, he was starting to mutate. A thousand microscopic fireballs burst through his blood vessels. His fingers stretched longer, each nail extended and curled forward. His trembling arms began aching and his vision blurred.

  This was good, this was part of the plan, but still … he’d never been through mutation before, and the pod kept shuddering with Get’s attacks.

  The control panel suddenly burst to life with flashing red lights and then smoke poured into the cabin as Get rammed him again.

  The codex on this pod was a metal box above the pilot seat. Mephim reached for it with a trembling claw. Surely the most senior officer on that Star Guard carrier would have some inkling about the secret negotiations. Maybe that freakish floating frog Uk was on board. He fiddled with the buttons, leaving deep gashes in the control panel. “This is ArchBaron Mephim to Star Guard transporter, come in.”

  Static. Then a girl’s voice, scratchy across the airwaves: “Star Guard transport rig H479-X to ArchBaron Mephim, proceed with your message.”

  “Put me in contact with your highest-ranking officer immediately.” The boy who had knocked the first pod off course was gaining, raising that wide-nosed weapon of his, and the girl wasn’t far behind him.

  “That would be me, ArchBaron.”

  “What?” Mephim spat into his headset. He absolutely did not under any circumstances have time for games. A surge of wrath burst through him with such explosiveness it surprised even him. “But you’re only a child, I can hear it from your voice. STOP THIS FOOLISHNESS!” His
voice crescendoed into an inhuman snarl.

  There was a pause, during which Mephim sweated profusely and watched with growing alarm as his chest heaved up and down, his whole body trembling through the transformation, and then the staticky voice returned. “This ship has been commandeered by the Flood City Rebel Guerrilla Squad, ArchBaron. I am Captain Yala Salazar and as such, the highest-ranking officer on board. How may I help you today, sir?”

  Mephim tried to scream No! but all that came out was a raspy howl.

  “Guys!” Ato yelled. “He’s gonna make it! You need to go faster.”

  Max frowned. He was accelerating with all his strength and had reached maximum speed. The Baron was still out of range, and now the Star Guard transporter was on the scene and probably about to blast him and Djinna out of the sky. “The vapors deployed?”

  “Everything’s set,” Djinna said. “And my dad’s got the holography covered.”

  A hidden portal slid open on the underside of the Star Guard ship and three laser cannons wheeled their heads out in a spinning fury. Max cringed, wondering whether he’d die in midair or make it all the way to the ground and then shatter into a million squishy pieces.

  The cannons burst to life, bright red flashes exploding across the sky, but they weren’t aimed at Max and Djinna.

  “What on earth is going on?” Djinna gasped.

  Max just shook his head, his mouth hanging wide open. They both slowed to a hover. Up ahead, Mephim’s escape pod was taking a serious whupping from the laser cannons. Three direct hits had knocked it into a pathetic spin, and a fourth tore a chunk of metal from its side.

  “Max!” A scratchy voice fizzled through Max’s earpiece.

  “Yala?”

  “Max! It’s me! It’s me!” She was laughing hysterically. “We, uh … borrowed a ship!”