Shattered Skies

by ALICE HENDERSON

  “I have to get out there.”

  Rowan gripped her arm. “This is crazy. It’s suicide. Even if you manage to save him from Olivia, there’s still the impact, the air blast, the tsunamis. You’ll be killed.”

  “I’m going,” H124 resolved. “I have to.” She turned away and headed out the door to the makeshift armory where they’d all piled their weapons after evacuating Sanctuary City.

  Bootsteps followed her down the hall. She braced herself for further argument with Rowan. Instead Byron’s voice called out, “So what’s the plan?”

  She smiled over her shoulder. “Get in. Get out.”

  “I like the complexity.”

  They jogged down to the weapons room.

  She grabbed an energy rifle and a handheld sonic weapon, along with a grenade belt. She slung it over her shoulder, the second time she’d worn such explosives. The first had been when she and Astoria had parachuted into Delta City. “I sure would have liked to have Astoria with us on this.” She thought of her friend, running toward the PPC soldiers, the brilliant explosion lighting up the night.

  “Well, you’ve got me instead,” he said, grabbing his Henry repeater, a Glock 9mm with a laser sighting, and a flash burster.

  She cinched the grenade belt over her torso. “Thank you, Byron.”

  “Besides,” he added, buckling on a holster. “This sounds like fun.”

  She shook her head with a smile. “You’re crazy.” She threw the energy rifle over her shoulder, draping her body with all the weapons she could carry. “Let’s go.”

  As they left the armory, Raven appeared in the hallway. “Be careful. She may be anticipating a rescue.”

  H124 nodded. “Thanks, Raven.”

  Behind him, Rowan peered out from the room, but he didn’t say anything.

  She and Byron sprinted outside, where Gordon readied the Lockheed Vega. The rescue mission was under way.

  Chapter 16

  “Let’s hope no one raided this place,” Gordon said from the cockpit of the Vega.

  H124 gazed down. A series of immense sandstone spires rose out of the desert floor. Sands blew in tan dunes around their bases. Long-dried-out river channels meandered across the barren land. As they descended, she marveled at the spires, her imagination transforming them into whimsical shapes. They looked like sentinels standing guard over this magical landscape.

  The Vega touched down on a stretch of flat desert. Nearby, in the shadowed side of a red sandstone butte, a great cave mouth yawned.

  “It’s in there,” Gordon said. “At least it was last year.”

  They piled out, Gordon taking the lead. H124 squinted in the glare of the bright desert sun, the heat punching her the moment she stepped out. The air hung heavy and dry, and she instantly grew parched. Reaching into her toolbag, she donned her goggles, then took a swig of water.

  Gordon marched up a steep incline to the mouth of the cave, his boots leaving swirls of dust in his wake. She and Byron followed him up the precipitous rise. They were all panting by the time they reached the top, and had to stop twice along the way to drink water and catch their breath.

  As they stepped into the cave, she welcomed the cool dark that enveloped her. Positioning her goggles on top of her head, she stopped, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the shadows. Gordon pulled out his multitool, turning on its small but powerful light. The focused beam penetrated the darkness. Eroded holes in the cave’s ceiling let in shafts of light, and she marveled at the interior colors—deep reds, chocolate browns, and caramel curves, all weathered smooth in antiquity by water.

  Gordon moved to the rear of the first large chamber and entered a side tunnel. H124 followed, having to bend over to navigate the narrow channel.

  “This place is stunning,” Byron said behind her, his voice echoing off the walls. Sunlight filtered up ahead. They emerged from the tunnel into a great sandstone cavern. A large hole in the roof allowed in another shaft of sunlight. In the middle of the chamber’s floor stood a sleek black-and-red helicopter, far more streamlined than what Marlowe flew. A layer of dust coated it. Gordon hurried over, yanking out the red cloth that perpetually hung out of his back pocket and running it gently over the chopper’s frame.

  “It’s still here,” he breathed with relief.

  “This thing’s a beaut!” Byron told him, his voice resounding once more.

  H124 had to agree.

  “How fast you say this baby can go?” Byron asked him.

  “Almost 300 mph,” Gordon told him proudly.

  Byron looked up, beaming. “Wow.”

  On the far side of the cavern, in the gloom, H124 could make out a series of methane fuel holding tanks.

  “Let’s fill ’er up and go!” Gordon shouted, rubbing his hands together.

  As Gordon climbed into the cockpit, H124 and Byron hefted the hoses over and fueled the helicopter. Gordon started it up, checking over the controls and engine status readout. Then he calculated the flight plan.

  H124 and Byron boarded the helicopter. She stood in awe as she stepped through the door. It was very different from the other one she’d been in.

  Where Marlowe’s helicopter had room for at least six people to ride in the back, as well as open space to store cargo, this one was jammed with so many different glowing instruments, H124 was relieved she wasn’t the one who had to fly it. Gordon sat nestled in the front in a cushioned black seat with straps, his fingers gliding over a plethora of controls, dials, and switches. She didn’t know how he kept them all straight.

  In the middle of the chopper was a similar seat, positioned in front of a control console. She leaned over it, reading the various switches. Buttons for missiles, forward, rear, and side guns, and a number of other weapon options glowed in the darkness. In the very rear were two jump seats that didn’t look very comfortable.

  “Does it still have all these armaments?” she asked Gordon.

  “You bet it does,” he replied eagerly.

  The rotors beat overhead as they moved to their seats. H124 took the seat behind Gordon, as Byron piled their weapons onto one of the jump seats and strapped himself into the other.

  They were airborne in moments, lifting deftly through the hole in the ceiling.

  “Hold onto your hats and secure your valuables,” Gordon said, and as soon as they cleared the aperture they shot forward, the engines roaring with startling fury. H124 fell back in her seat, held there by G-forces as they rocketed forward. They maneuvered around the sandstone spires, shooting across the desert like they’d been fired out of a cannon. She clenched her teeth.

  “Woooo-hoooo!” Gordon whooped, and H124 grinned uncontrollably. “Hot damn!” he roared, and punched them even faster.

  H124 managed a look back, where Byron was sinking into his seat, gripping the harness, and gritting his teeth. He caught her grin, and burnished one of his own.

  Finally the acceleration evened out to a constant speed, and she peeled herself away from the seat. Looking out the windows, she watched the sandstone terrain speed by.

  As they passed over a wide desert, H124 wondered how close they were to the radar facility they’d visited to image the incoming asteroid and its fragments. The land rose abruptly as they raced over a valley between foothills and the coastal mountains. Dead urban sprawl, swallowed by drought and sand, spread out as far as she could see: old roads, dead power plants, highways littered with rusted cars. They raced over the coastal mountains, and the seashore came into view, black and stained from oil spills, flotsam and jetsam piled up along the dirty beaches. They screamed past it. In seconds they were out over the open ocean, the deep blue churning below them, whitecaps dancing on its surface.

  For a long time she observed the vast ocean blue, staggered by its sheer immensity. Soon it was all that occupied her sight. She tried not to imagine the helicopter going down, leaving th
em to scramble among pieces of sinking debris as those depths claimed them.

  After some time, the ocean took on a strange appearance in the distance. No longer deep blue, it appeared mottled grey and white. She withdrew her diginocs, zeroing in on the surface. Instead of flowing waves, her eyes fell on trillions of floating pieces of trash.

  She saw undulating rafts of plastic bottles, crates, floating fishing nets, pieces of broken-down garbage she couldn’t distinguish. “What is all that?”

  Gordon peered down. “That, my dear, is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “Garbage? In the middle of the ocean?”

  “Yep. It’s home to trillions of pieces of plastic, big and small. Because of converging currents, it all collects here in the Pacific, just one huge gyre of floating garbage.”

  “That’s insane!”

  “And it’s huge. More than a million square miles, and it’s estimated to weigh a hundred and sixty million pounds.”

  H124’s jaw fell open. “What?”

  “It’s been collecting here for who knows how long. People throw stuff away, it ends up in the water, and floats out here.”

  She studied it with the diginocs, spotting tangled fishing nets, industrial trash, and pieces of plastic boat hulls. “You have got to check this out,” she said to Byron.

  He unbuckled and came forward, taking the nocs and gazing out. “Holy hell.”

  “I heard a long time ago there were plans to clean it up, but they had too little funding to make much of a dent,” Gordon told them.

  “There’s something else out there,” Byron said as they drew closer to the PPC ship coordinates. “Floating on the plastic.”

  “Like what?”

  He handed her back the nocs and pointed. “What do you make of that?”

  She followed his finger and trained the nocs there. He was right. Something was floating on top of all the garbage. She zoomed in, the image resolving into a series of rusted hoverboats, all tied together against a floating structure with makeshift walls. Fires burned in barrels placed regularly around the mass of trash. Whatever this place was, it wasn’t abandoned debris. It looked occupied. She scanned the area, discerning more boats and other structures. Tall spikes adorned the corners of the buildings, objects with streamers mounted at the top. The streamers glistened in the sun, white and red. She zoomed in further still, and a lump caught in her throat.

  They weren’t streamers. They weren’t pendants. They were human heads, mounted on spikes, bone exposed and long, bloody hair flailing out behind them on the ocean breeze.

  Just then a hulking man strolled out of one of the floating buildings. He wore a jacket with twin epaulettes on his shoulder. She zoomed in to see that the epaulettes were made of human skull caps, with strings of dried meat hanging down from the jaws. The teeth cupped his shoulders, while above, empty black eye sockets stared out.

  She lowered the diginocs. “It’s a floating Death Rider city.”

  Gordon’s hand trembled on the flight stick. “What?” He pulled out his own diginocs, studying the throng of rafts and rusty boats tied together in the garbage. “Do you think…” He blinked in the brightness. “Do you think they have ranged weapons? As soon as they hear this engine…”

  Through the diginocs, she watched as the man with the skull epaulettes spoke to a group of Death Riders, who scurried off after he pointed out to sea and barked orders. She didn’t think he’d spotted them yet.

  She followed in the direction he was pointing, and at first she couldn’t make out where his attention was focused. Then she zoomed in on another part of the garbage gyre out in the distance. A massive ship cut through the dense layer of trash, plowing through the decaying carcasses of a past civilization. Before its bow churned a mass of old tangled fishing nets and chunks of unrecognizable sun-bleached plastic debris. She zoomed in and sucked in a breath. The luxury ship came into sharp focus, towering twenty stories over the water, multiple decks with sparkling swimming pools and an outside dance floor of coveted rare wood. Lettering on the side read, “The Morning Star.”

  “I see the ship. It’s humongous,” she told the others.

  “Do you see Willoughby?” Gordon asked.

  She scanned the people on board, but they were too far away to make out details. “I’m not sure. We need to get closer.”

  Gordon slowed the helicopter and hovered. “If we get any closer, those Death Riders will hear the engine. And if they do have ranged weapons…”

  She pointed the diginocs to the water directly beneath them, wondering if they could walk on the garbage. The Death Riders had built an entire floating city on it. The layer was thick, a mass of gyrating trash.

  “Do you think we could—” Her words were cut short as a deafening boom sliced through the air. She stared down to see a massive gun mounted on one of the floating platforms. It swiveled in their direction. Its huge barrel jutted out over the waves, a large white cylinder mounted above it.

  “Is that a CIWS?” Gordon cried, banking violently. He pronounced it like “sea-whiz.” H124 to cling to the armrest as they dipped sickeningly to the right.

  She saw the barrel spin, plumes of smoke and ammo blasting from the gun. But the shots went wide. “I think it’s safe to say they noticed us!” Gordon shouted.

  As he banked away, she trained the diginocs on the man with the epaulettes again. He pointed at the helicopter, shouting orders at one set of Death Riders while commanding another contingent toward the PPC ship. Five Death Riders ran to one of the moored hoverboats and leapt in, casting off.

  Water plowed up behind them as they roared toward the PPC ship.

  She scanned back to the commander, diginocs falling on the CIWS, which was pivoting and aiming, readying to fire again. She swept over the floating mess of trash, spotting another group of hoverboats to the far right, on the outer edge of the floating city. She pointed them out to Gordon. “Do you think you can drop us off over there?”

  He gazed down. “It’ll be close.”

  “We’ll take it.”

  Dipping the helicopter’s nose down, he raced for the hoverboats, which bobbed abandoned on the waves. All the attention was in another part of the city, with Death Riders either rushing toward the PPC ship or feeding more ammo into the CIWS. The barrel swung in their direction.

  H124 took off her headset and unbuckled her safety belt, stepping around her seat to the back of the helicopter. Byron unlatched his safety belt as well, handing weapons to her and slinging his own over his chest. She grabbed her toolbag and slid the door open.

  As Gordon dipped low, she saw that a group of Death Riders were already racing across the trash, trying to head them off before they reached the boats.

  Gordon screamed down, pulling up just a few feet above the water. She leapt down, landing hard in one of the boats. It sloshed chaotically in the water. Byron jumped next, landing beside her. The boat threatened to tip as they tried to steady themselves, but it remained upright. Byron whipped out a tangle of wires from the ignition as another pounding clatter erupted from the spinning barrel of the CIWS. Gordon banked away, the rounds narrowly missing the helicopter. He sped away, engines roaring.

  Byron twisted the wires together. “Damn, this is old tech. Wish Dirk were here.” The wires sparked in his hands as she heard the lift fan whir to life.

  The Death Riders closed in, only a hundred feet away now, drawing their guns. Her heart thudded at the sight of an AK-47 aimed at her head. She reflexively gripped Byron’s shoulders as he moved to the controls. “We’re off!” he cried, opening up the throttle. They shot forward, bouncing off the waves. She almost flew off the boat. She wrapped her arms tighter around Byron, looking back over her shoulder. The Death Riders piled into boats and took off, but the ocean’s undulation kept them from aiming properly. A round whizzed past, hissing into the water.
r />   Gordon shot into the distance, well out of range of the CIWS.

  Swinging the hoverboat around the edge of the floating city, Byron raced for the PPC ship. Another round clanged into the fan behind them. H124 flinched. Byron careened the boat to the left, zigzagging to throw off their pursuers’ aim. Still the Death Riders closed in, and a round struck the deck only a foot from H124. Waves sprayed up behind them, hailing down tiny pieces of microplastic. She gripped Byron’s shoulders as he sped around a mesh of tangled junk. She didn’t see how they were going to lose them.

  She startled as the pursuing boat erupted in flames. The Death Riders screamed as fire consumed them. One managed to dive over the side. His lifeless body bobbed back up to the surface, facedown. The thudding of a helicopter rotor brought her eyes up as Gordon raced by overhead, the port missile bay smoking.

  Byron punched the air as Gordon banked away. He steered the hoverboat for a direct intercept course with the PPC ship. Already the Death Rider hoverboats had reached the luxury ship, throwing grappling hooks up over the rails to board it.

  PPC troopers emerged from the bowels of the ship, wheeling out a sonic gun. More soldiers loosed their energy rifles upon the attacking Death Riders, who fell over the sides and back into the ocean, struggling in the soup of garbage.

  The sonic gun fired at an oncoming Death Rider hoverboat, and the attackers dropped instantly, some slumping down into the waves, others collapsing onto the deck. She and Byron had to steer clear of the sonic gun.

  He wheeled the hoverboat around to the back of the ship, skirting past two Death Rider boats. In the chaos, the marauders didn’t notice that H124 and Byron weren’t of their ilk, so they sped by undetected.

  Byron slowed the craft at the bow, next to an emergency ladder leading down the side of the ship. “We can climb up there!”

  He pulled up next to it and cut the engine. Grabbing a tattered rope from the back of the craft, he tethered the boat to the ladder. Then H124 grabbed the rusted metal and started to climb, the rungs cold and slippery in her hands. Her boots slipped, but she regained her footing and continued upward. Beneath her, Byron stepped out of the boat and followed.