“Does it know where the survivors are?” Amanda asked, feeling for a weapon, backing away from the bot when she didn’t find one. After the first one spoke to her, she’d grown suspicious of the machines. They forced these droids into service, and she expected an uprising.
“It’s an errand bot. It likely wouldn’t interface with a centralized database,” Tray shrugged, not even bothering to ask. “Also, if I survived the destruction of this place and the death of 82,000 people, I wouldn’t still be here.”
“You’re not a hybrid,” Amanda pointed out.
“Thanks. I hadn’t realized,” Tray said.
“If we’re not heading in, then I vote we fix the thrusters and take off,” Saskia interrupted.
They all stayed outside the quarry, feet planted. They were ready to fly out, and yet, for some reason, they kept going through the motions, getting dressed, walking to the quarry. Like zombies. Like they didn’t have a choice. Amanda suspected outside manipulation, but she hadn’t seen the hybrid since before they came, and she didn’t trust her own paranoid thoughts. She studied the machine. Hawk had a knack for revitalizing the powered down machines. More than a knack. They bowed to his whim.
“It’s not natural. His wizardry,” Amanda whispered to Danny.
“Hawk’s?” Danny asked. “It’s natural to him. The way he sees into the workings of a machine—it’s not something that can be taught.”
Amanda looked over her shoulder, watching Tray set up the interface with the machine. She suspected that the hybrid was involved in its working. Somehow.
Two hours later, Saskia trudged down the road from the avalan quarry to the ship, weighed down by the metal buckets hanging from the yoke across her shoulders. The droids had wheels designed for smooth roads, and they had a tendency to tip when they hit bumps. Saskia had been controlling hers from a Virclutch, but the basic commands Tray had programmed in couldn’t keep the dust from jamming the joints.
The sun baked the air inside the Dome, and Saskia’s old Guard uniform clung to her skin. She was out of clean clothes and out of work clothes. Without soap, no amount of water could mute the stench of hard labor. She was down to this reviled garment she’d never had the heart to toss, and by the end of the week, it’d smell as bad as everything else. Danny and Amanda were shaken by the sight, so when the first batch of avalan was ready to be hauled, Saskia volunteered to go alone.
They should have left days ago. The hull was in decent repair. Her health and the Captain’s had improved. The longer they stayed, the more they had to worry about having enough fuel to take off. They’d even talked last night about taking off this morning.
“Everybody rest. We’ll leave come sunrise,” the Captain had said. But come sunrise, some of the pieces they’d fired on the day before had come loose. It should have been fine. And yet, here they were.
Meditating on the sound of her footfalls, she steadied her pace. There were eight hundred and twenty steps from the quarry to the ship, and she was more than halfway there. She took the right fork at the bell tower, past the gutted hospital building.
Her footsteps were overpowered by the sound of someone running—boots against stone.
“Amanda? Is that you?” she called, unable to turn for the weight on her back.
Someone slammed into her back, and she crashed forward, the weight of the yoke beating her to the ground. The buckets spilled and Saskia scrambled to free herself from the yoke and save their avalan.
“Amanda! I’m not a Guard anymore!” The words wouldn’t help. When the argument came up, Amanda was beyond reason. “Get out here and help me clean this mess you’ve made!”
The avalan was thick enough that it hardly had time to shift when the buckets tipped, but Saskia was still angry. She sat on the street, nursing her scraped hands, scanning to see where her attacker had gone, but the only footprints were hers.
“Who’s there?” she demanded, making a wider scan around the scuff marks. Amanda’s shoes were borrowed and they didn’t fit her properly. There was no way she could be so light-footed. Saskia tapped her Feather. “Amanda, where are you?”
“With Sky. I wanted to hear the rest of the story,” she chirped. Saskia could hear the others talking in the background. “Do you need help?”
“No. No rush. Sorry I interrupted,” Saskia sighed, rolling her ankle, debating the possibility that she’d hallucinated an attacker. She’d fallen next to the bell tower—the building Hawk insisted was haunted. It gave her chills every time she passed by. Leaving the avalan, Saskia peered into the building, using the light from her Virp to illuminate the main floor. A marbled, spiral staircase circled the perimeter of an atrium for five stories, diverging into vestibules at each level. The shadows shifted and Saskia spun her flashlight around. A little girl crouched on the stairs, her skin as pale as the white sandstone.
“Hello, there,” Saskia said in Lanvarian, feeling for her stunner but not drawing it. The girl frowned. “Did you push me over?”
“It wasn’t me,” the girl replied. “I’m not here.”
The girl waved her hand, and Saskia felt like her eyes were being covered. Pain pierced through her leg, radiating from her hip down to the soles of her feet and up to her shoulders. Gasping, Saskia collapsed, clutching her side. The pain took Saskia back almost fifteen years, to the day the peaceful protests on Terrana turned violent. The day rebels tried to assassinate their leader.
Saskia saw the raised projectile gun and reacted without thinking. She launched toward Governor Cheoff and was midair when she heard the gunshot. The bang was subsumed by the panicked roar of the gathered masses. She collided with Cheoff, pushing him away from the podium, but the bullet hit them both, grazing his shoulder and passing through hers. Another shot fired, ricocheting off the moon-slate lectern and into her side. Her body fell, spraying blood when it slammed against the platform that she was supposed to be decorating. Governor Cheoff had declared Terrana’s independence from their home world and the rules of that world were forfeit. It was chaos and blood. And duty. Saskia lifted her head, trying to verify that her asset was safe.
The assassination attempt on Governor Cheoff was the trigger point to the Massacres that preceded the Revolution on Terrana. Saskia had been paralyzed for months, denied medical care, and declared a deserter because her rescuer had taken her off world for treatment. The pain of losing her Guard identity compounded that of the physical injury.
Saskia’s body contracted, but her pain was so great, she couldn’t muster a sound.
The memory looped. She was on a podium next to the Governor, and his speech riled the crowd.
“Major,” she hissed, leaning toward her commanding officer while trying not to disrupt the stately image of the flanking Guard. “Potential hostile in the crowd.”
Saskia kept her eye on the cloaked figure with the projectile. The weapon lifted in slow motion, and Saskia leapt to save the Governor. The bullet ripped through her torso.
The memory looped again and again.
11
“There is no organic matter in the soil at all,” Tray exclaimed, still reeling from his latest discovery. “There’s a jungle growing just off the side of the plateau, and I can’t figure why it doesn’t come over the top. That well you found the other day… Danny, keep up!” Tray nagged, keeping one hand on the yoke attached to his wheeled droid so that it wouldn’t fall. Danny had hands on two more droids, but he was so exhausted, it looked like they were holding him up.
“When did you become a scientist?” Danny complained, blinking his bloodshot eyes. His scraggly, black beard was caked with red clay and white dust. Tray kept his face clean and his hair was in neat, tight rows. He glistened with sweat, but he was a five-minute shower away from looking presentable. Danny was not. Tray hadn’t slept much either this past week. He had nightmares every time he closed his eyes, and so he redirected his exhaustion toward his experiments.
“Part of owning half the land in Clover is understanding how to a
ssess its potential. You’d know that if you were in any way involved in the family business,” Tray lectured. Ten years ago, Boone was a thriving city. The only difference between them and Quin seemed that they directed their tech toward bots, droids, and war machines. They didn’t have a link with Terrana motivating them to keep a space program. “That well you found was dug after the destruction of the city, and you only have to go about two feet down before you find the organic matter. It’s only the surface that is dead.”
“If there’s a new well, then someone had to dig it,” Danny said, perking up a little. He was more interested in the anthropological history than the investment potential. “There’s no reason for nomads to dig a well up here with food and water in such easy reach. Someone tried to settle here. There have to be other artifacts.”
“Saskia and I pulled a handful of the organic soil to the surface and within an hour it was dried out. The next day, it was dust. No trace of organic matter. The seeds that blow up from the mountain also decay really fast. What’s interesting—” Tray paused, realizing he’d lost his brother’s attention. “Why are you walking so slowly? Are the wheels jamming?”
“No.”
“Is it that disease you caught in Fox Run?” Tray asked. “Is it still making you tired?”
“I’m staying half a step behind you, so I can be sure you keep up,” Danny mumbled, shaking his head, sending beads of sweat flying.
Tray rolled his eyes, exasperated. “What’s interesting is that this toxic death syndrome has no effect on processed food. Weird apples: dust. Applesauce: fine. What is that? What can do that?”
“Nothing we know of,” Danny agreed.
“And what’s it doing to us? I don’t think we’re aging unnaturally fast. Well, maybe you are.”
Danny huffed at the jab, but his lips twitched in amusement.
“That other city you found—where you and Saskia got sick—was it like this?” Tray asked, pausing again.
“No. There were trees and moss and growth all through it,” Danny said. He rubbed his jaw, and it was only then that Tray noticed the dark bruise hiding under his beard.
“Danny, your face,” Tray said. Amanda hadn’t had a violent episode in days, or so Tray had thought. If Danny were having nightmares like Tray was, Tray didn’t expect him to complain, but he recognized the marks of fresh abuse on his brother’s skin.
“You don’t have to let her do this to you,” Tray said carefully. “We can put her in her own space, let her thrash around, keep the door locked so she doesn’t run off into the night.”
Danny let go of the droids, dropping any pretense of strength.
“She has a disease, Danny. You can’t just hug her and pray it away,” Tray said. “She won’t be like this forever. There’s help when we get to Quin.”
Danny shook his head, seeming to stare right through Tray. Then he pointed to two buckets spilled in the road.
“Saskia?” Tray called, running toward the buckets and searching for her. Saskia lay in an open doorway, a few yards away. “Danny, she’s down!” Tray called.
The building Saskia had crawled into offered some shade, but with no breeze, the air was stifling. Tray knelt next to her, and cradled her face. Drool dripped from her mouth, and she lolled against him, semi-conscious.
“Come on. Talk to me,” Tray said, touching her damp cheeks. Ever since the illness took them at Fox Run, both Danny and Saskia had been prone to weakness. Between that, Tray’s injuries, Hawk’s infections, and Amanda’s breakdowns, they’d taken twice as long to patch the hull as anticipated.
“What’s going on?” Danny asked, trudging over, rubbing his sore shoulders.
“Water. Give me your water,” Tray said, holding out a hand. Taking Danny’s canteen, he dabbed water onto his fingers and splashed it onto Saskia’s lips. He heard Danny behind him, muttering prayers, and finally, Saskia’s eyes fluttered opened. She shouted and flailed, flipping onto her stomach, crawling into the building.
“Saskia, stop. Stop, it’s all right!” Tray cried, crawling in after her, clamping down on her ankles. “You’re all right.”
Saskia moaned and twitched, collapsing again.
“Let’s get back to the ship. Do you think you can walk?” Tray asked, pulling her arm around his shoulder.
“I’ll carry her,” Danny volunteered.
“You most certainly will not! You’re a hairsbreadth from collapsing yourself. This dead Dome is probably riddled with that Havara Pytr disease,” Tray huffed. His legs hurt; his shoulders hurt; but he lifted Saskia. They were close enough to the ship that it would be easier to carry her than rig a droid to take her. Danny went back for the droids, but Tray clucked at him. “Leave them. We’ll come back for them later. You’re going to rest before you fall down next to her.”
They’d built a makeshift shower in the bay to rinse off the mud and cool down, and the heat in Boone made cool water even more of a luxury. After rinsing Saskia off, Tray took her to the infirmary and covered her with a dry sheet, but Saskia writhed and moaned.
“What’s going on, Skipper?” Sky asked, clapping the dust off of her clothes as she entered.
“We found her blacked out by the bell tower,” Tray said, untangling the sheet from her arms. “It looks different than Havara Pytr. Where’s Amanda?”
“Talking to Hawk,” Sky said, hooking up the medical monitor over Saskia and studying the scan options. “Have you ever listened to those two converse? Hilarious.”
“I don’t think ‘converse’ is the right term,” Tray smirked. Amanda and Hawk spoke different languages, but they still seemed to enjoy speaking to each other without translators, and somehow even managed to convey a concept here or there.
Saskia’s hand broke free of the sheet and she slapped Tray’s arm as she flailed.
“I think she’s trying to talk, but she hasn’t actually said any words,” Tray said, catching her hand. “I can’t even get her to nod and say she understands me.”
“Nolwazi, scan Saskia for head injury,” Sky said.
“Please position the neural scanner over the subject’s head,” Nolwazi replied.
“It is in position,” Tray muttered, jiggling the scanner arm, then checking the connection.
“Elevated neural activity detected,” Nolwazi reported. “Possible traumatic stress reaction.”
“Guess that’s going around,” Tray sighed, not wanting to count the sleepless nights he’d had since he first flashed back to the kidnapping. “How do I treat that? Do we have medicine on board?”
“Appropriate medication is not available in the infirmary.”
“Did Danny collapse, too?” Sky asked, turning to the second bed where Danny lay face down.
“Passed out as soon as his head hit the pillow. I don’t think Amanda let him sleep last night,” Tray sighed. He wasn’t used to being able to order his brother to sleep, but Danny was exhausted, and Tray suspected he’d had more sleepless nights tending Amanda than he’d admit to.
“We have some of that medicine left,” Sky said, picking crumbs of clay from Danny’s beard.
“I know,” Tray said. “This is something different. Don’t suppose you know any local doctors in this neck of the woods.”
“Not unless ghosts take consults. Should’ve been, though. This place was supposed to be… Alive,” Sky said. “We need to get the droids to the ship and the avalan fired. We’re down two hands, and Amanda only counts as half a hand.”
“Sky!” Hawk hollered, running into the infirmary.
Saskia keened, her body curling like she’d been kicked. Danny didn’t even stir.
“Amanda’s run off! She went back to the city,” Hawk exclaimed.
“My point,” Sky muttered. “Tray, see if you can track her. Hawk, with me.”
She ran out, making a vain attempt to contact Amanda via Virp, speaking in Terranan.
Saskia curled into a ball, tucking Tray’s hand to her chest for comfort, her body quivering with every heartbe
at.
“I’ll be back soon, Saskia. Try to rest,” Tray whispered, caressing her face and tugging his hand loose. Saskia’s grip tightened and Tray bit his tongue.
“Uniform. Where is it?” she gasped between sobs.
“Saskia, you’re wearing your Guard uniform. Part of it,” he said, leaning over to get his face close to hers. “Can you understand me, Saskia?”
She nodded, her body curling tighter as her muscles tensed.
“What’s going on? What happened?” he asked.
“I’ve been shot,” she whimpered.
“Where?” Tray asked. “Nolwazi, was Saskia hit by a stunner? Or any kind of weapon?”
“No physical injury detected,” Nolwazi replied.
“I’m shot,” Saskia murmured over and over, squeezing her eyes shut. He felt sick, his own traumatic memory stirring. Tray looked to the console by the second bed.
“Saskia, I need to find Amanda. She ran back into the city, and I don’t want her getting hurt, too. Give me my hand, okay? I’ll work in the infirmary. Just let go for a minute,” he said.
When Sky had suggested they stay and fix the ship, she hadn’t anticipated the repairs to take more than a day. It took that long just to get sufficient control of the droids to convince them to move outside of their designated pathways. And only five minutes after that to realize they were ill-equipped for such movement. Every day in Boone brought fresh pain to the surface. The others would walk through the city with her and listen to her stories. When Sky told them about the harvest festivals that lasted a week, or the nights spent lying on top of the Dome with her astronomy teacher watching Kessler debris rain down through the atmosphere, she felt at peace. But as soon as the story finished, and she couldn’t tell it again, the ache started anew.
“Did you hear that?” Hawk panted, grabbing Sky’s arm, pulling her under the wing of the glider for cover.
A low rumble echoed through the cargo bay.
Hybrid: A Space Opera Adventure Series (The New Dawn Book 4) Page 10