The climb was easier now that he could lean into the ship and let it take his weight, and the going was quick. He passed the painted palm tree of the mural he loved so much, fronds within touching distance. Coconuts about ready to fall. The frothy bridge of a broken wave passed by next. The paint was wet – The Oasis melting – after all these years it was now that the mural would begin to lose its lustre, as though it had waited for his witness. It was the radiation, not the heat. Jax hoped the suit was up to scratch.
With the end in sight he climbed the rest of the way without threading the cable, for it didn’t really matter at this point. The cockpit viewscreen passed by on the left – perhaps the girls would look to their right and be able to see him – and then he was at the socket. The shimmer of burning plasma reflected in the surface of the hull and there – glorious – was the sky above him, as close as he could he reach. He thought of a poem he’d once read when he was four:
For beauty held, for the hand that holds,
For the endless sights and what burdens told;
We are one and the only one
For whom the end is the end as the lights go cold.
Uncredited, if he recalled correctly. Right now, a few million people were witnessing this exact aurora, but he doubted any of them were outside of their domes.
This was his and his alone.
What are you doing?
Oh just wondering off on one of my tangents…
Heat slammed him and he watched the gauge rise to 56-degrees.
“Shit,” he said, making a grab for the hatch covering the console. He pried it open and it swung down on its hinges. He turned a dial to the ON position and the screen shone brightly to life. The primary gauge he looked for and found was for stored energy, which read 100%. Upon first inspection all those months ago, Jax had activated the protective shielding around the battery cells; a self-sustaining field that blocked natural cosmic radiation, and alternate radioactive sources, so that charge wouldn’t drain. He praised his presentiment and plugged the transfer cable into the socket.
He activated the comm and said “Time.”
Silence.
“Lani? Scarlett?” He called out, knowing it was futile; there was no connection showing on his HUD. The radiation will be blocking the comm. He should have started a mental countdown and cursed himself.
“Shit.”
There was nothing for it but to discharge and hope it worked.
On the control console, he searched for the OUTPUT switch and toggled it to EXTERNAL. The charge gauge dropped to 99%. He waited and watched. The countdown was intolerable. His eyes stung so bad and he wanted nothing more than to strip off his helmet and rub at them, no matter that the radiation would boil his skin black.
98%.
Thirty-seconds.
That was too long, man, he thought.
He panned through the settings, unable to find an option to speed up the discharge.
At least I’ve connected it before the time runs out.
He took one final look to the skies – For the endless sights and what burdens told – and began the descent. The final flare imminent. Even if he’d been counting mentally, he knew he would have lost count at some point, the stress like a searing compress on his skull. He had no idea if he could make it in time.
If he’d have chance to tell the truth.
Going down, he made double speed, each boot on rung reverberating in his head. He just wanted to lie down. He just wanted to sleep.
Something wasn’t right.
He went cold.
Freezing.
The hairs on his arms stood to attention and the tips of his fingers and toes tingled as though he’d been in the sleep deprivation tank in Arcadia for a few hours, only now waking. The end of his nose started to burn – ice cold. Then he noticed the external temperature: 107-degrees Celsius.
Internally, it was -40-degrees.
He turned his back to the ship and positioned his heels on a rung, and leaned backwards. He looked up. It was day. Blue-white. Yellow. Now orange. Now red. The colours shifted through alternate phases and Jax stared, mesmerised, not too displeased that this would be his final experience.
Then the sky caught fire.
Roiling flames engulfed him.
Engulfed the ship.
The visor on his helmet dimmed, to not be blinded.
Two feet in front of his face, close enough to reach out and touch, stood a wall of sun burning the very air itself beyond the active shielding. He pressed up to the ship, wishing he could merge with it, become one; get as far away from the spirals and swirling fires of death as possible. A smell erupted inside the suit and he realised he’d soiled himself, in both ways possible.
And then the ship began to topple towards its belly. He clung to the ladder as it fell, legs flying out, and it was in this movement that he became aware of the complete and utter silence on this side of the shielding. No doubt it would be deafening beyond it.
Then he lost control of his legs and watched, in utter horror, as they flew out towards the fire. This is it, he thought, closing his eyes and preparing for the searing pain as his feet decided to go for a dip.
They struck something solid.
He opened his eyes and felt sick. Simultaneously falling to the ground – still clinging to the ladder with a hooked elbow – and walking on a star. He pushed out, thighs burning, pinning himself between the ship and the shielding, and waited for what seemed like forever for the impact. When the ship finally toppled over, his legs were thrown as per gravity, slamming into the ship beneath him, yet somehow he clung on. He clung on and clung on with eyes squeezed shut, in total silence; too scared to open them. The smell of his own shit and piss choked his every breath. His shoulder stung with pain and his left arm felt dead – some part of him was conscious of a dislocated shoulder; every other part of him wanted to sleep. Maybe it was the Freon. Maybe it was blood loss, though he wasn’t aware of any cuts. Maybe he was pissing blood. Maybe it scared so much shit out of him he’d begun shitting blood.
He didn’t think so. Not really.
Confusion and pain reigned.
Finally, he opened his eyes. He saw in the reflection of the ship that the fire behind him had gone, and so he turned, and saw ash and smoke and a light above, like the sun through a heavy mist, only it was the whole sky. The ionosphere on fire.
The sky.
The rocks around them had disintegrated. The whole cliff formation gone.
Twins
“Is it over?”
Scarlett held Lani’s hand or Lani held Scarlett’s hand, same difference; their hair plastered to their head and neck, greasy and lank. Their skin newborn-red, and indeed; the maelstrom of swirling black smoke and orange embers and thick dust beyond the viewscreen seemed like Eden compared to the birth-canal of flame they’d just endured: the whiplash as the ship toppled forward; the fear of Jax’s silence raking across their heart; the jubilation as the red bar’s numbers began to rise until the bar was no longer red, but green, and they could activate the shielding.
“Jax, Jax, are you there?” they called out, jumping from their chairs. Disorientation fuddled their brain until they realised the ship was the right way up, then they ran towards the back of the ship, taking doors in ways that were intended, seeing everything a-new.
“I’m too hot,” moaned Lani.
“We didn’t turn the air-con back on, damn it,” Scarlett said, spinning around. Lani followed, not wanting to be separated. Once the air-conditioning was reactivated the affect was almost immediate, with the hot air being sucked straight into the vents – almost as though from the girls themselves who instantly felt cooler.
“Oh, man, that was too hot.”
They returned to their original plan of searching for Jax.
Their brother – or as near as he could be. Once we’re together again we’ll call mum and dad, they thought – They’ll be worried sick.
“They’ll think we’re dead.”<
br />
“The whole of Arcadia will think we’re dead.”
“We have to alert them.”
“We have to find Jax, he’ll know what to do.” They knew he was smart – smarter than probably anyone else in the dome – and that sometimes this frustrated him, which was why they’d kept his little secret (so long as they could visit every now and then). Let him have an escape – what harm could it do?
“If he’s not dead.”
“He won’t be dead.”
Their thoughts drifted to the baby in the artificial womb. He better not be dead.
The deeper into the ship they travelled, the cooler it became until the gentle breeze prickled their skin. Hairless goosebumps rose.
“Do you know how red you look?”
“Do you know how red you look?”
They entered the cargo area where the door to the outside stood open, the transfer cable unwinding out into the murky darkness. Blinding light highlighted a rad-suit covered body sprawled, entangled in the cables.
“Jax!” they shouted, and ran to him. They turned him over, and he began removing the helmet. “You did it! You did it!”
“Remind me never to leave the house again.”
They moved to hug him but he warned them off. “The suit could be contaminated, let’s leave the hugs for later.”
“Are you okay?”
He sat up. “I’ll need help getting out of this thing; I think I’ve dislocated my shoulder.”
“So… do we touch you or not?”
“Just…” he said, achingly, “let me stand and I’ll try unzipping.”
They gave him some distance, watched him struggle, and then went in anyway, each taking an arm. “Argue all you want. Can you turn that light off though, it’s blinding?”
Five seconds later and it was off, and the containers, still attached to the walls although in some cases, the now-floor, retreated back to their shadows.
“You’re limping.”
“I may have broken something too, I’m not sure. Thank you for activating it just in time, I’d have been toast otherwise.”
“We’d all have been toast.”
“How are you so cold?” asked Lani, taking Jax’s arm from the sleeve of the suit.
“Freon in the suit.”
“Was gonna say, we look like peaches but you’re white as a ghost.”
The suit dropped to the floor, and they could see the dark bruising around his shoulder and down his rib cage. He tried moving the arm but it remained stiff and steadfast to his side. He used his other arm to roll it around, a grimace on his face.
“Can we help?” they asked with trepidation, not really relishing the prospect. When he instructed them to flank his shoulder and force the joint back in, they grit their teeth and got on with it, screaming as they not only heard the crack of it popping back in, but felt it. Sweat steamed from his skin when they laid hands on him. Even their hands were red.
“Thank you. Have you checked the child?”
“Not yet.”
He nodded, hobbled over towards a medical supply chest, and retrieved a crutch.
“Where you going?”
“To see her.”
They followed the boy who had found himself a father; surprised by how much affection, care and attention he seemed to be showing, as normally he remained aloof. Unaffected by the relationships of others and caring only about study – and reading. It wasn’t that he was particularly a cold person, he just looked as though he was always deep in thought, and interrupting him might mean some great loss.
“So do you have a plan to get out of here?”
“We have power – which is good. I doubt we can contact Arcadia, but we can try. I’ll take a look at the magna-inertia diagnostics to see if we have the power to lift off. As far as I know they still worked okay. The one good thing to come from the storm is it disintegrated everything around us, meaning we’re no longer trapped.”
“We can fly home?” They envisaged flying over the dome and seeing the hundreds of bodies below looking up at them; imagined landing in a cloud of dust at the front door and rushing out to meet their parents in an embrace that would never end. They pictured all this and knew it couldn’t be that easy.
“Perhaps – I’m not promising anything. The other option is we all put suits on and try and walk home, but that wouldn’t be my preference.”
Because of the baby?
“Whatever it takes,” they said.
It felt odd walking into the lab the way nature intended – that makeshift staircase on their left as they walked through – and the lab itself looked in complete disarray. Tables and unbolted chairs were piled in the corner where gravity had thrown them, and shattered glass crunched underfoot. Cupboard doors hung open, and electrical equipment lay smashed in pieces.
None of this seemed to register with Jax. He beelined straight for the artificial womb attached firmly to the one immovable row of cupboards, and appeared to fawn over the glass, touching it all over. They finally realised he was checking for cracks. He then checked upside-down readouts and hmmed in satisfaction every few seconds.
“She okay?”
“For now. The solution she’s in acts as a cushion if any two surfaces come close; molecules compressing and forming a harder barrier than pure liquid. I’d like to run more tests but I guess we have other priorities at the moment,” he sighed.
“You think? What is it with her? Why is she so special?”
Jax whirled on them and may have been about to shout, loudly, like he sometimes did when someone didn’t understand the ‘simplest’ thing and he got frustrated. Instead, he groaned and clutched the underside of his arm, where the ribs were almost black.
“Just…” he looked miserable. In pain and dejected. “Help me to the cockpit.”
“You okay?”
“I think I’m drowning,” he said, and coughed, and blood splattered on the floor before him. “Help me to the cockpit.”
The twins gasped, tears immediately brimming. They cried “No,” but he shouted at them to not make him shout and “For the third time, help me to the cockpit.”
They filed in beside him and he dropped the crutch. He glanced over his shoulder as they helped him from the lab – a sinking feeling in their gut that it was for one last look. They kept repeating “You can’t die, you can’t die – what will we do without you? What will we do?”
He was silent. They knew how it sounded – what will we do? No regard for the fact that he was the one dying.
“We don’t mean it to sound bad – we really don’t. We can’t control the ship though. We don’t know our way home from here. Oh, Jax – you can’t die!”
“Ssshhh,” he whispered, settling into the forward command chair. “I know you’re scared, it’s okay. Let me take a look at the systems.”
They sank to their knees either side of him and buried their heads in his neck, allowing tears to fall on his shoulders. He was so cold. Horribly, horribly cold. They stretched arms across his chest until they met each other, embracing him, warming him up, warming him up. They felt the vibration of his words as he spoke, their ears against his skin.
“Okay, this looks promising. What we have here,” his voiced sounded strained, as though withholding a cough. “We can work with this. Now, let me see.” A few seconds of silence passed while they listened to him using the controls on the dashboard. “Fingers crossed.”
The ship lurched, and their grip tightened on him with startled yelps.
“I’ve set course for Arcadia.” He barely made it through ‘Arcadia’ before the coughing fit began. They sat back and watched his blood paint the dashboard red.
“What –”
“Ssshhh. Listen to me.” He took a deep breath before continuing, face contorting. “The baby. I’m… sorry. I… did something... wrong. So wrong. I shouldn’t have. She is yours. Both of… yours. And… mine. And… so much more. She is the mother of immortals.”
From the author
Neon Sands - A Trilogy
Available on Kindle and in paperback.
Text link: getbook.at/amazon-neon-sands
Also available:
Plains of Ion: The Neon Sands Trilogy Book Two
Flames of Apathy: The Neon Sands Trilogy Book Three
ALL TITLES ARE IN THE KINDLE UNLIMITED PROGRAM!
Thank you for reading! Leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Follow me on Twitter @AJSAuthor, and like my Facebook page @AJSmithAuthor.
See ya around!
Neon Zero_The Neon Series Prequel Page 7