The Pilgrims of Rayne

by D. J. MacHale

  JOURNAL #30

  IBARA

  It was all about getting back to Ibara.

  The people had to know an attack was coming that would be like nothing they’d seen before. Heck, like nobody had seen before. Fighting off a handful of grungy Flighters was one thing. Protecting the island from thousands of killer dados was another ball game. I remembered those automatic guns that blew the Flighters’ gunboat out of the water. I hoped there were more of those bad boys around Ibara. Fighting the dados with poison blow darts was going to be worse than useless.

  Siry and I ran along the balcony until we reached the first corner. Sure enough, there was a doorway that led to a staircase. We quickly charged down. Did I say quickly? It took forever to get down those stairs, because we weren’t going straight down. It was a pyramid. The stairs were on a flatter angle than normal stairs. We were moving away from the center of the pyramid as much as we were moving down. On the way, we passed hundreds of dados who were walking slowly, methodically, down the stairs. I was nervous about it at first, thinking they might grab us. They didn’t. They must have thought we were Flighters. Or maybe they weren’t thinking. They were robots after all. They reminded me of the mindless security goons of Quillan, with their square heads and oversize bodies. Their eyes were just as dead as the dados from Quillan, too. For all I knew, these were the dados from Quillan. Saint Dane had gotten these dados from somewhere. From what I’d seen of Veelox, they weren’t able to manufacture clothes, let alone sophisticated robots. The walls between the territories were nearly down.

  I was too busy running to worry much about the larger implications. I’m guessing it took us about half an hour to finally hit the bottom of the pyramid.

  “This is where it gets tricky,” I said to Siry, as if everything up to this point hadn’t been tricky at all.

  As we got closer to ground level, we started seeing Flighters mixed in with the dados. They may have all worn the same raggy clothing, but there was no mistaking the two. The dados were tall and powerful looking with scary-big square heads. The Flighters were much smaller than me, probably a result of centuries of lousy food. Or no food. I don’t think any of them had cut their hair. Ever. And they smelled. At least the dados didn’t have that foul odor. That would have been gruesome, times many thousand.

  Strangely, none of them gave us a second look. I was beginning to think the Flighters didn’t have much more brainpower than the robotic dados. If all it took to fool them was a change of clothing, then three hundred years of evolution didn’t do much for improving intelligence. Dopes. When we entered the central area of the pyramid, I saw signs that the Flighters had made the Lifelight monolith home. Several slept along the walls. Garbage was everywhere. Smelly, rotten rags were piled up in random areas. It was probably their laundry. Their clean laundry. The smell was pretty rank. There wasn’t a whole lot of hygiene going on around there.

  “Look,” Siry whispered, pointing toward the center of the large area.

  It was Saint Dane. He was walking in front of a line of dados with his hands clasped behind his back, like a general inspecting his troops. I’m not sure whether to describe the army of dados as pathetic or frightening. They weren’t dressed like an army. There were no uniforms. They all wore threadbare rags, like the Flighters. Many of them wore shredded coveralls that were red, or dark blue, or dark green—the coveralls that had once belonged to the vedders, phaders, and jumpers of Lifelight. They had no weapons, either.

  But they were dados. They couldn’t be killed. Each one was an exact duplicate of the other. They stood over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and big hands. They looked like muscle guys, though I guess robots don’t really have muscles, technically. And those big, square heads made them look like an army of Frankenstein monsters. More intimidating than anything was that there were so many of them. They could throw a thousand dados at Ibara, lose every one, and have thousands more to take their place. They didn’t have to be good or experienced or have any great tactical plan. All they had to do was keep coming.

  I guess the best word to describe the sight was…“overwhelming.”

  “Why isn’t Saint Dane looking for us?” Siry asked.

  “He probably thinks we’re trapped up in the pyramid. He’d never think we’d be crazy enough to slide down the outside.”

  Siry added, “I can’t believe we were that crazy either.”

  We ducked down, waiting for Saint Dane to walk far enough away so he wouldn’t catch sight of us. We quickly moved along the wall, headed for the glass corridor of the core, and the exit. We dodged in and out of Flighters who were sleeping or gnawing on bones (I didn’t want to know where the bones were from), or watching the spectacle of the dados being assembled. They didn’t care about two semiclean Flighters who had no interest in anything other than getting the heck out of there. We made it around the perimeter and back into the core with no problem. Quickly we moved through the glass-walled control rooms of Lifelight. The monitors were still lit. It was amazing that after three hundred years they still had power in the pyramid. I didn’t stop to try and figure out why or how.

  The last step before leaving the pyramid was a grisly one. Remember I wrote about the sticks we kicked aside in the long corridor on the way in? Now that the lights were on, we saw what they were. Bones. Human bones. Lots of them. I knew they were human because there were a load of skulls, too. Siry froze. He’d never seen anything like that before. Come to think of it, neither had I. The closest I’d ever come was in the quig pen under the Bedoowan castle on Denduron. I’ve been calling Rubic City a place “of the dead.” Until that moment we’d never actually witnessed the physical remains of those who didn’t make it. I’d just as soon have gotten out of there without having had that pleasure.

  “This is Saint Dane’s grand plan for remaking Halla,” I said. “Do you need to see any more?”

  Siry’s eyes were glassy. He gingerly stepped through the scattered bones, trying hard not to disturb them. Moments later we were back out in the warm sunlight of Rubic City.

  “I didn’t think we’d make it,” Siry said.

  “We haven’t,” I cautioned.

  “So how do we get back to Ibara?”

  “That’s the easy part,” I said with a smile. “There’s a flume in Rubic City. C’mon.” I took off running.

  This was a no-brainer. The flume could put us back on the island in minutes. I’d never traveled within a territory, but since the flumes always put us where we needed to be when we needed to be there, I was totally confident that we could step into the tunnel in Rubic City and step out on Ibara. Okay, maybe it was more like semiconfident, but we had to try. The more time the people of Rayne had to prepare for the attack, the better. All we had to worry about was getting past the quig-bees. Oh, that. One step at a time.

  By my clock it had only been a few years since I’d been to Veelox, so I remembered exactly where to find the manhole that led down to the underground train tunnel and the flume. We jogged quickly along the deserted city. I wasn’t even afraid of being jumped by Flighters, because we looked like them now. Idiots. In no time we arrived at the street that held the flume. There was only one problem.

  The street was gone. Well, not exactly gone, it was probably still there, only it was buried under the rubble of a collapsed skyscraper. I looked around, thinking—no, hoping—we were on the wrong street. I quickly realized it wouldn’t have mattered. The whole block was under a three-story pile of broken stuff.

  “Maybe we can dig to it,” Siry suggested.

  “With what? Our hands?”

  We stared at the warlike ruins of what had once been a street lined with pretty brownstone buildings and trees. The flume was a no-go. We both knew what we had to do. Without another word we took off for the pier. It was Plan B time. We had to find a boat to get us back to Ibara. We quickly ran to the block where we had first entered the streets of Rubic City and got a view of the pier. Tied up alongside it was our yellow pirate ship.
Though it wasn’t yellow anymore. It was a smoking, charred-black wreck that listed hard to the right, with its bow sticking up as if gasping for air. Siry and I stood at the edge of the buildings, staring at the sad remains.

  “Do you think any of them are alive?” he asked.

  “They could be,” I answered with absolutely no confidence.

  “We didn’t find Twig, either,” he added sadly.

  “We were lucky to get out ourselves. When this is over, we’ll look for them. All of them.”

  Siry said, “When this is over, Rayne could end up like Rubic City.”

  We exchanged grim looks. “Let’s find a boat.”

  The rusty gunboats that had attacked our yellow ship were gone. I scanned the harbor, looking for any other usable craft. There was nothing. Zero. Not a ship in sight. Besides the pier with our smoldering ship, two more piers jutted into the harbor. Neither had any boats tied alongside.

  “This makes no sense,” I said thoughtfully. “If Saint Dane’s going to send thousands of dados to attack Ibara, how are they going to get there?”

  Siry’s eyes widened. He took off his belt with the pouch that contained Aja Killian’s ancient map. He unfolded it for both of us to see.

  “We’re here on this peninsula,” he said, pointing to the map. “According to the map, the coast looks pretty rugged on either side.”

  I scanned the harbor. The water was flat and calm. “Why would they keep their ships anywhere but right here where it’s close?” I wondered out loud.

  Siry said, “It would take a very big ship to move those dados. Probably more than one. They could tie them right up here to the piers.”

  The piers. I looked at all three. Something was off. Two looked the exact same, but the one to our far right looked slightly different. It was built higher. Where the other two piers had steel pilings beneath that could be seen when the tide was lower, this pier looked more like a solid structure, with sides that reached down under the water.

  “I want to get a closer look at that pier,” I said, and started walking.

  We moved quickly across a few hundred yards of debris. The closer we got, the more the pier looked like an enclosed structure.

  “There could be something in there,” I declared. “Inside the pier.”

  Siry was skeptical. “Like what? It’s not tall enough for a ship.”

  The mystery deepened a few seconds later. Two Flighters appeared from behind a pile of debris at the beginning of the pier. I grabbed Siry and pulled him down behind a pile of twisted steel. The Flighters continued to walk casually along the width of the pier.

  “What are they doing?” Siry asked.

  “I’ll bet they’re guarding whatever’s inside.”

  Siry took a cautious peek at the pier. “There really might be something in there.”

  The only way for us to find out would be to get past the Flighters. I needed a weapon. There was nothing around but piles of rubble…and lengths of ancient steel. I grabbed a section of pipe around six feet long and a few inches thick. I tested its strength, felt its weight, then spun it around and snapped it back into fighting position. Perfect.

  “Whoa,” Siry gasped. “Where did you learn that?”

  “Long story,” I said.

  It was time to put my Loor skills to work. With the pipe clutched at my side, I crept silently forward, dodging between the mounds of wreckage for cover. The Flighters weren’t exactly a crack security team. The two were in some kind of argument. Over what, I didn’t know or care. The two started shoving each other. It wasn’t violent, just heated.

  It was about to get very violent. I was about to drop in.

  Their attention was so focused on each other that they didn’t see me creeping toward them. It was perfect, for about ten seconds. I snuck forward and hid behind the final pile of rubble, looking at twenty yards of open ground between me and my quarry. I couldn’t get any closer without being totally exposed. Siry crept up right behind me.

  “Once the fight starts,” I whispered to Siry. “Run for the pier.”

  He nodded. His eyes were wide and scared, but he was ready.

  There was nothing left for me to do but attack. I leaped out from my cover and sprinted toward the Flighters. I was in the open. All they had to do was turn their heads and they’d see me. Luckily, they were focused on each other. I figured I had a good shot at jumping them before they even saw me.

  I was wrong.

  I was five yards away. The pipe was pulled back, ready to take these guys out, when one of them saw me. The surprise on his face was almost funny. Almost. This was very serious.

  “Ahhh!” he screamed, and turned to protect himself.

  I went for the guy who turned. I feinted, as if to swing the pipe one way. When he threw his arms up to protect himself, I flashed the pipe the other way…and totally whiffed. The guy ducked and rolled. He was quicker than I thought. Oops. But it was okay. He didn’t jump up to fight. He ran away. I’m serious, he turned and ran. I realized that my back was to the other Flighter, so I spun quickly, ready for his attack. It never came. He was running away too. Both of them sprinted to get the heck away from me. Not exactly dedicated guards. It was the easiest fight I’d had in, well, ever. They were running scared. I figured we had free access to the mysterious warehouse/pier.

  I was wrong, again.

  One of the Flighters pulled something out of his rotten clothes as he retreated and put it to his mouth. A shrill whistle pierced the air, and my ears. He was sending out an alarm. From one of the buildings a few hundred yards away, doors burst open, and Flighters began pouring out, headed for us. There were so many they reminded me of the quig-spiders on Quillan. We were trapped. The ocean was behind us, the Flighters in front of us. We had to get inside that pier. If there was a ship, there was a slim hope we might be able to get it under way before they reached us. Very slim. We both turned and bolted onto the pier. The floor itself was in way better shape than the pier where we’d first landed. It was cement and solid—a fact that gave me hope there really was something beneath there that they were protecting. That, and the fact that hundreds of Flighters were sprinting closer to keep us away from it.

  “How do we get in?” Siry yelled.

  I scanned the pier. It was flat. There weren’t any doors or ladders or anything that would be the obvious way to get down below. Suddenly I was beginning to fear we were wrong, and this was nothing more than a thicker-than-normal pier. A quick glance back showed me the Flighters were getting closer. I was about to suggest that we run to the end of the pier and dive off. Swimming would be our only way to escape.

  “There!” Siry shouted, and ran forward.

  He’d spotted a three-foot square in the floor that could be a trapdoor. His fingers played across the surface, desperate to find something to grab on to.

  “Got it,” he declared.

  It was a ring embedded in the surface. He dug his fingers in, lifted the circle up on its hinge, and pulled. The square lifted up. We had our way in, but to what? There wasn’t time to be cautious. Without hesitation Siry dropped his legs into the hole. There was a steel ladder that he used to quickly climb down. I was right after him. Before dropping below, I took a look back to see the Flighters were nearly at the pier. It was hopeless. Even if there was a ship down there, there was no way we’d be able to get under way in time. I closed the trapdoor behind me. I know, it wasn’t much, but slowing them down for even a second might prove critical. Once the door was slammed, I quickly slid down the ladder, eager to see what was below.

  Since I began this adventure, I can’t count the number of times I’ve written about how I’d seen something I hadn’t expected. This was one of those times. I think it’s safe to say that it came very close to the top of the list on the surprise scale. What I hoped to see was a ship. Preferably one that Siry could figure out how to get moving quickly. I got my wish…a few thousand times over. What I saw inside that pier, floating on water, wasn’t one ship. Or tw
o or three. I can only guesstimate the number, but I’d say we were looking at a thousand watercraft at least. I say watercraft because these weren’t ships. That’s what the true surprise was.

  They were skimmers. From Cloral. Floating side by side were multiple hundreds of the small, sleek watercraft like the aquaneers of Cloral used to fly over the water. This was how Saint Dane would get his dados to Ibara. Each craft could carry a half dozen of them easily. You remember the skimmers, right? They were like oversize Jet Skis with side pontoons for stability. Their bright white hulls made them look like water rockets. They were fast. They could maneuver tight turns, which meant they could dodge the fire from the guns of Ibara. Even if a few were hit, there would be hundreds more behind it.

  Looking at the sea of skimmers bobbing on the water was like seeing the last piece in the puzzle that would bring about the destruction of Ibara. There was only one good thing I could say about it. I knew how we were going to get out of there.

  Siry was staring out at the small sea of crafts with his mouth open in wonder. There was no time to explain. I could already hear the thundering feet of the Flighters. They were on the pier above our heads, coming our way.

  “Let’s go!” I ordered, and started sprinting forward along the long, narrow walkway that ran parallel to the skimmers at water level. We had to get to the front of the pack.

  “Pendragon?” Siry called while running behind me. “What are these? Where did they come from?”

  “Later!” I screamed.

  I heard the creak of the trapdoor opening behind us. Flighters began climbing down the ladder. More trapdoors were yanked open over our heads. Flighters poured down from above. It was going to be close.

  In seconds we reached the leading edge of the mass of skimmers. I was happy to see that the end of the pier wasn’t enclosed. Before us was open ocean. The only thing keeping the bobbing skimmers from floating out were several thick chains draped across the opening.

  “Get them down!” I screamed to Siry.