The Pioneer

by BRIDGET TYLER

  “Drop it!” he shouts, aiming his rifle at the Sorrow. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  The second Taker brandishes a huge staff bristling with crystal spikes and hiss-moans, spattering us with sonar like oil from a frying pan.

  “I don’t want to hurt either of you,” Jay repeats. “I just want to get my friend out of there.”

  “Beth can leave anytime she wishes,” Tarn calls from behind us.

  I spin to find him striding up the street behind us. He’s unarmed except for a plain wooden staff. He gestures to the two Takers to lower their weapons. “We also desire to do as little harm as possible.”

  “Except to the kid you left for dead in the middle of the street out there,” Jay snaps.

  Tarn covers his face with his hands for a moment, palms in. “Chris attacked a Taker with the knife my brother gave him. The Taker acted to defend her own life.”

  “Maybe so,” I say. “But a lot of other people are dying who haven’t done anything to the Sorrow.”

  “Except land your starships on our world and build a city without invitation or explanation,” Tarn says. “Conflict cannot be completely unexpected.”

  Inside the greenhouse, Beth shrieks.

  I lunge for the doors. One of the Takers gets in my way, but Tarn hum-hisses something decisive with sharp edges, and they step back.

  I throw open the doors, and Jay and I charge inside.

  Beth is standing with her back to her lab table, clutching a sealed dish of Stage Three bacteria in one hand and a laser welder in the other. Ord is pointing a huge, black rifle with a thick stock at her head. I didn’t even know weapons like that were in the 3D fabrication library. I’ve only seen them in history vids.

  “Lucille assures me that you are valuable to our future, which is the only reason I have not yet taken your life,” Ord snarls at Beth. “But I will end you if you do not give me the Stage Three.”

  “Just give it to him, Beth,” I say.

  “Absolutely not,” she says. “If he wants to stop me, he’s going to have to shoot me.”

  “That would be a terrible waste,” Dr. Brown says, emerging from the storage area at the back of the greenhouse, carrying a stun gun.

  She fires.

  Beth crumples, unconscious.

  “Beth!” I lunge for my sister, but Ord steps between us, his enormous gun pointed at my belly. Jay grabs me, hauling me back.

  “There’s no need for that,” he says to Ord, nodding to the huge weapon. “We’re just here for Beth. We won’t get in your way.”

  “No, you won’t,” Dr. Brown agrees, tucking the stun gun into her robe and pulling out an insulated steel canister.

  But I can’t help myself.

  “Don’t do this!” I plead as she takes the petri dish of Stage Three from Beth’s limp fingers and seals it in the canister. “Please, Ord. It isn’t worth it.”

  “That is for me to judge,” he says. “I am Followed.”

  “Relax, Joanna,” Dr. Brown says. “We’re not just going to release Stage Three and hope for the best. We have a plan.”

  “Your sister will inoculate the solace trees and the Sorrow against the bacteria,” Ord says, as though this were all a foregone conclusion. “And my Takers will seek out and destroy the infected Beasts. Everything that matters will be safe.”

  His words make me want to scream. To shake him. Doesn’t he realize that everything matters? A planet is more than just the sum of its parts. You can’t destroy pieces of it and expect the rest to keep going on like nothing happened.

  “Seems pretty arrogant,” Jay says behind me. “Thinking you can control random mutations in bacteria.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Brown says calmly, “it is. Arrogance is a vice our species share. But your opinion wasn’t requested, nor is it required. Humanity has taken far greater risks with Earth, for far less gain. This is Ord’s world. This risk is his to take.”

  “It isn’t just his world,” I cry. “This planet belongs to all of the Sorrow, including Pel and the others you forced to commit suicide tonight. And it belongs to the phytoraptors and the solace trees and every other living thing on Tau. It’s not up to you, who or what is important. Who lives and dies.”

  “Yes, it is,” Ord says. “I am Followed. If sacrifices are necessary to destroy the Beasts, so be it.”

  “Now, if you’ll excuse us,” Dr. Brown says.

  “No,” Beth says, groaning as she struggles to sit up. The shoulder of her uniform is charred from where the stun bolt hit her, and her left arm is hanging limp. “I won’t let you use my work to commit genocide.”

  Ord stalks to my sister, looming over her. “You won’t let me?” he rasps. His harmonic voice scrapes over my skin like sandpaper. “The Beasts took my father when I was still pouchborne. I should have died then. But I thrived. I grew. I became Followed. My leadership has since been challenged four times, by four great warriors. But I am still Followed. Powerful alien creatures from beyond the stars invaded my world. But I turned the Beasts into a weapon, and I defeated them. In this, the Sorrow’s greatest enemy became my tool. And today, as the sun rises, I will force our enemy to destroy themselves. I do as I see fit. You cannot hope to stop me.”

  With that, he kicks Beth in the stomach, sending her flying into the plexiglass wall.

  Beth gasps a scream as the air explodes from her lungs. I throw myself past Ord, no longer caring what he might do to me. I can feel Jay beside me. I can hear him telling Beth to hold still while he checks her ribs, but my brain is spinning too frantically to focus. As she pushes him away and staggers to her feet, pieces of information start to weave themselves together in a new pattern. I think I’m figuring something out. Something that could change everything. The question is, What can I do about it?

  Ord turns to Dr. Brown. “Are you ready to leave this place?”

  “I am,” she says. She’s talking to him, but she’s still looking at me. There’s something in her face underneath the mask of serenity. What is it? Sadness? Resignation? Fear? Maybe all three?

  Ord hums a triumphant chord and heads for the doors. Dr. Brown follows him.

  I don’t have much time.

  I pull off my flex and press it against the transparent wall screen behind me. “Computer, access file Backup: Chorulux phytoraptor: Encounters: Sunflower. Play in three-sixty mode.”

  The transparent walls of the greenhouse flicker, then fill with the three-sixty of the sunny Diamond Range valley where the Rangers died.

  Dr. Brown gasps as though in physical pain.

  “No!”

  “Yes. You deserve to know what really happened to your crew,” I say. “You deserve to know what really happened to Pasha.”

  “I know what happened,” she whispers, staring at Dr. Pasha as he steps into the three-sixty. The raw pain in her face makes her look more human than I’ve ever seen her. “I’ve watched this every day for five years.”

  “And somehow, you never saw it for what it is,” I say as her younger self’s laughter burbles through the audio feed of the recording. The low thrum follows it. That’s what I need Dr. Brown to hear. But she isn’t listening. She’s staring at Pasha’s face. Soaking him in.

  Abruptly, I realize that she isn’t seeing or hearing anything else. Just him. That’s why she never heard the truth, despite all the times she’s watched this three-sixty in her empty cabin in the caves. All she ever sees is Pasha dying.

  “Computer, cut picture,” I say. “Isolate background noise and amplify.”

  The walls fade back to transparency, and Dr. Brown and Dr. Pasha’s playful banter drops to a murmur. But the hum gets louder. It pulses through the greenhouse, rising and falling in a dense, itchy melody that makes my skin feel like it’s too tight. The shape of the sound is there, as well as the melody, and at this volume you can really feel it. It’s unmistakable.

  Ord lunges forward and presses his gun to my head.

  “Turn. It. Off.”

  I don’t argue with him.
I don’t need to. I can see the truth in Dr. Brown’s face.

  “Computer. Cut feed.”

  The hum dies. Dr. Brown doesn’t move.

  “I heard the hunting song in the background when I watched this in your cabin in the caves,” I say. “But I didn’t know what it was then. I didn’t put it together until Ord said he defeated invaders from the stars using the phytoraptors. He didn’t just mean tonight. He’s done this before.”

  Jay sucks in a sharp breath. “He did it to the Rangers, too.”

  “That’s right,” I say. “It wasn’t Dr. Pasha’s fault that the phytoraptors suddenly turned on them. It wasn’t even the phytoraptors’ fault. Ord is the one who attacked and killed the Rangers—the raptors were just his weapon of choice.”

  Ord keeps his gun pointed at me, but he looks to Dr. Brown. “Lucille. Please, you must understand—”

  “Why?” Dr. Brown grabs the barrel of Ord’s gun and pushes it aside as she steps between us. She reaches out and pulls off his mirrored sunglasses so she can look into his liquid black eyes. “Why did you do it?”

  His violet biolight darkens nearly to red, but he doesn’t look away.

  “What else was I to do?” he says. “I did not know you then. All I knew was that you were not of this world and you were powerful. We watched you. We considered you. And then your people sought to communicate with the Beasts. I could not permit that.” He strokes her cheek. “It was the only solution I could see.”

  She stares into his eyes for a long time. Then she nods.

  “I understand.”

  My stomach drops into my boots.

  “What?” I say. “You can’t possibly—”

  She spins to glare at me. “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t think, little girl. We all do what we must for our people.”

  “In this, we are all alike,” Ord says, resting a hand possessively on her shoulder. “Lucille understands my determination better than any other.”

  “He’s right,” she says. “I do.”

  She’s still standing between Ord and me. He doesn’t see her press the canister of Stage Three into my hands. She looks me right in the eye and says, “Now it’s time for you to do what must be done.”

  My heart stops. She wants me to take the Stage Three and run. I can see that. But what’s going to happen to her?

  Dr. Brown whispers, soundlessly: Please.

  I squeeze her hand once.

  Then I grab Beth and Jay and run.

  Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack! Ord’s gun spits fire as we blast through the doors to the greenhouse, but I don’t look back. I don’t stop.

  “What just happened?” Jay shouts.

  “She gave me the Stage Three,” I shout back. “We have to destroy it.”

  A Taker throws themselves into my path. There’s no time to dodge them, so I plow past their swinging knife and drive my shoulder into their torso. They go sprawling, but I manage to stay on my feet and keep running.

  We make it another block before Jay shouts something behind me. There’s a quick crackle of gunfire, a scuffle, then a wet thud.

  I spin back just in time to see Jay collapsing to his knees, blood spreading across the front of his thermal.

  Ord is standing behind him. Jay’s blood is dripping from his pronged knife.

  “Jay!” I shout.

  “Keep going,” he rasps.

  Ord raises his knife to strike again, but Jay reaches up and grabs his arm, flipping Ord over his shoulder. Ord hangs on to Jay’s wrist as he rolls to his feet, using his momentum to fling Jay across the street. Jay’s body hits the pavement with a wet crack. He rolls, moaning.

  Ord kicks him in the head. Jay collapses.

  This time he doesn’t get up.

  A hollow roar fills my ears, blocking out all other sound. Beth is shouting at me, but I can’t hear her. I can’t breathe.

  Jay still isn’t moving.

  I think he might be dead.

  Beth grabs my elbow and shakes me, hard. This time, I hear her. “Joanna! Come on! Move!”

  My feet feel like they’re magnetized to the ground, but the urgency in her voice drags me back into the moment. I force myself into a run. The motion kick-starts my brain.

  “The school!” I shout to Beth. “Get to the school! We can lock ourselves in there and call for help!”

  We stumble around a corner and almost collide with Tarn.

  I yank Beth backward, ready to reverse course, but Ord and the Takers from the greenhouse are right behind us. We’re trapped.

  “Please give me the Stage Three,” Tarn says quietly.

  “No,” Beth says.

  Tarn spins his staff in a short arc across his body and smacks the end of it against Beth’s head. She collapses without a sound.

  I clench the canister tight as I face Tarn over my sister’s unconscious body. “I’m not giving this to you. You’re going to have to take it,” I say.

  “I understand,” Tarn says. “But I will regret harming you.”

  “Then why are you doing this?”

  “I follow Ord,” he says.

  “You don’t have to,” I say. “You’ve seen things that Ord hasn’t. You understand things that Ord doesn’t.”

  Tarn lost his blindfold somewhere in the race to catch up with us. His face is bare. His eyes squint against the dim light of the moons.

  “Make your own choice,” I plead. “Do what you believe is right, Tarn.”

  From behind me, I feel Ord barking orders at his brother in Sorrow. I know what he’s saying without translation.

  Kill her.

  Tarn looks from his brother to me. He moans a soft Sorrow melody that makes me want to weep. “Following my pouch mate is the only way to help him make the right choices now. It’s the only way to be sure that the Sorrow will survive.”

  He’s made his decision.

  “I’m sorry, Joanna,” he says, lifting his staff.

  I feint left and dodge right, around Tarn. I only make it a few more steps before the end of his staff connects with my spine and my legs go numb. I collapse.

  Tarn rolls me over and pries the canister from my fingers.

  We make eye contact.

  “The juvenile is dead,” he calls to his brother, lying in English. “I have the Stage Three. Let us leave this place.”

  He straightens, leaving my line of sight. I want to get up, or at least call for help on my flex, but if I try, Ord will know that Tarn lied. Then he’ll kill me. Or Tarn will.

  I have to play dead and wait.

  I’m not aware of losing consciousness, but when I wake up, Leela is leaning over me. Her flex is draped over my throat.

  “Don’t move yet,” she says. “You’ve been out for a while.”

  “Ord—”

  “Gone,” Leela says. “A flyer with Vulcan colors landed in the square thirty minutes ago. Took them all out of here. The raptors are gone too. They bolted pretty fast, once we got to our guns.”

  “Are the others okay?”

  “Beth is okay. So is Chris,” she assures me. “I got him to medical in time. Dr. Kruppa is working on him. I grabbed Dad and Sarge and came back for you guys as soon as I could. We found you like this.”

  “What about Jay?”

  Leela swallows hard. “He’s alive.” She shakes her head. “But it’s bad. He might . . .”

  Die. Jay might die. The thought coils itself around me, crushing my bones.

  “Dad is working on him,” Leela adds, trying to sound optimistic. “That’s why he had me check you out—you’re . . .” She checks her flex and swears. “Have you been scanned since we got back?”

  “No, I kept meaning to go to medical, but—”

  “Jo,” she says, looking up from her flex, wide-eyed, “your pacers are gone.”

  Eighteen

  “Don’t move, okay?” She scrambles to her feet. “You need a real doctor.”

  She hurries off. I lie there, trying not to panic. Panic will make my heart beat faste
r, which might kill me without my pacers. Of course, that thought just makes me want to panic harder. How can my pacers be gone? Whatever happened to them, it must have been while I was passed out. I can’t even sit up for long without them. Much less run, or climb cliffs, or fight.

  Unless I don’t need them anymore.

  The thought strikes my brain and flares like a match. Tarn said, “When a Giver heals, the body is restored to its true state.” The Givers healed my broken ankle and my burns. But if the Sorrow healing ritual restores a body to its true state, does that mean that they healed my heart and lungs as well?

  I take a deep breath, focusing on the sensation of air rushing in through my nose, down my windpipe, and into my lungs. I can feel the breath inflating them against my rib cage, easily. I breathe out, pushing the air through my mouth and letting my lungs deflate.

  It feels easy. Smooth. The way it did before the accident, when I never thought about what it felt like to breathe.

  I sit up.

  I don’t see any sparks or get light-headed. My pulse doesn’t jump.

  I stand up.

  I’m still fine. My heart is beating a little faster, but I’m not short of breath. I’m not feeling dizzy.

  “Joanna!” Doc snaps from across the road, where he’s still working on Jay. “Lie down right now.”

  “I can’t,” I say. “I don’t need to. I need to . . .”

  I need to go. Now. While there’s still time.

  I run.

  If I’m wrong and my heart is still a mess, then I’m not going to make it very far. But if I’m right, that means I can fly. And if I can fly, I can go after Ord and Tarn. I can stop them before they infect the phytoraptors.

  The flyers are parked side by side on the airfield, their black solar skin shimmering under the floodlights. I race to the closest one, open the rear doors, and bound up the ramp into the flyer.

  I’m not even that out of breath.

  Exhilaration sweeps through me, momentarily blasting away the grief and anxiety and terror that are crammed into my brain.

  I don’t need my pacers anymore.

  I bring the flyer online and initiate the preflight sequence. The rotors roar to life as I drop into the pilot’s seat and press the autoconnect button on my harness. A black webbing skims out from its straps and bonds with the chair.