“Be ready for a welcoming party!” I shouted. “They’re opening up!”
“I see!”
“Damage control!”
“I bet! Too late for that now!”
I turned my head and caught Baines ducking back inside, more expletives forthcoming, this time complaining about the heat.
“It’s the end times, man.”
Ahead, the entrance opened to its full height, gaping like a mouth. Lights glowered red so it looked like either it had its tongue out or they’d laid out the red carpet for us. I doubt the latter. It felt like we were being eaten as I steered us inside. Baines said something about smashing out a side window, and held his rifle close.
In the rearview camera I watched as the entrance closed.
Beyond the clear tunnel – akin to a polytunnel cutting through the Agridome, acting like a decontamination chamber – tall redwoods climbed the sky, hanging with veins. These always caught me off-guard – for a city run so optimally, they seemed self-indulgent. Beautiful, all the same, and I suddenly wished Jerry was here to see them. I don’t think he’d ever visited Neon. Oh, the entrance is closed, I suddenly noticed, and the lights dimming, and the air hissing, and my eyelids closing.
We passed out around about then. Never did get the chance to fire a weapon – just as well as I’d probably be dead already. Baines, closest to the hatch, fell first; I watched him collapse across the console and slip to the floor, and I knew instantly what was happening, and part of me was okay with that. Let me fall asleep. Peaceful. Painless. No longer a witness.
Then I woke. Head groggy, eyes stinging. A potent smell of lemons in my nostrils. I became conscious of my weight and two others flanking me, holding me under the armpits. I fell into them, trying to stand straight. Then my stomach cramped and the force of it bent me in two, and puke spilled across the grey, cement floor.
“Pull yourself together, Edmonds,” said a voice I recognised as Franghorn.
My stomach felt terrible, so I put my fingers down my throat to force the rest out. I may have tried aiming for a pair of feet standing a couple metres away, but I was too weak to fire very far. “Bastard!” I spat out between heaving.
“Stand him up!”
As I wiped puke from my chin two arms hauled me to my feet. My head began to pound. Then I felt a breeze I hadn’t noticed before.
We were at the top of the dome, standing on the roof of the ring that hung from the apex of the dome’s structure. Reinforced steel struts painted black held the ring in place. Beyond those, through the dome, the night sky continued to dance with plasmic rainbows.
I shrugged off his goons and looked around for Baines. He was nowhere to be seen. It was just us four.
“What have you done with Baines?”
Franghorn looked to the floor, etched a face of genuine-looking regret. “He did not react well, I’m afraid. His body went into convulsions and then he had a heart attack brought on by stress.” He met my eyes. “I’m truly sorry for your loss. We had to take precautions, as you know.”
“Precautions, my ass. You tried to shoot us off the road.”
“For which I am also sorry. It seemed like the easiest option at the time, but now you’re here, perhaps you can still be of use.”
I spat at his face. It was a good one, too, gobby and wet, and it dripped down his cheek as he wiped it away. He nodded towards a goon and I received a hard smack behind my ear, doubling my vision. Two Franghorns told me this was my final chance. Any more behaviour like that and I could eat lead.
I wanted to tell him I didn’t care and that he should just feed me lead right now. I really wanted to. Not enough to override my innate self-preservation though, it seemed. Now my end was potentially so close, I don’t know, it’s strange and hard to put into words; maybe it was the pain of the blow to my head or my still churning stomach, and my beating chest – tangible reminders of existence – I thought of all that being NO MORE and I almost pissed myself with fear. I just crumbled and started crying. Useless Edward. Edward the Ugly. Edward the Coward. Just let me live, I thought, in this shithole of a place. Perhaps Baines had been my courage.
I admit this, dear diary, for it’s the truth and I have never lied to you.
His goons stood me back up and Franghorn stepped up to my face. “You going to behave now?”
I nodded. “Just explain why?” I groaned.
“To save humanity, of course. You think we would have done this out of spite?” Oddly, I appreciated that he didn’t feign ignorance of my knowledge.
“Millions are going to die.”
“Better than all of us.” He turned his back on me to admire the view. He pointed; “New Seren.” He pointed in another direction, and then another, saying “Bergot” and “Remington.” Then he faced me again. “Too many people for this planet’s resources to sustain after the solar catastrophe. In order to save humanity, sacrifices had to be made. Our scientists calculated how long the frozen underground lakes would sustain us, how long the molten gases could be mined, before we all starved. They concluded we would never survive long enough to break free of the nuclear aftermath, the radiation storms and showers that would eventually dissipate and give us back our planet. So we started planning. Reinforced and shielded pipes are spread deep underground throughout this region – they’ve already begun siphoning off shared resources. We’ve developed technology – which we will share with the few remaining subsidiary domes – to engage with the ionic storms in the aftermath and utilise the radiation charge in the atmosphere to develop a new source of power.”
He stepped up close to me again, smiling widely. “We will survive!”
“At what cost,” I said weakly.
“Irrelevant.”
I fell to my knees. “Why are you telling me this? Why am I not dead?” I looked up and I knew; from the heat of the surface on my knees, to my uptilted chin – I knew.
“You could still have value.”
I nodded. “Baines didn’t die of a heart attack, did he?”
He laughed. His chest puffed up larger when he did, giving breadth to his shoulders beneath his military tunic. “I like soldiers – anyone in service really where rank and rule apply: they abide.” He glanced at the goons and gestured at them to move away, then he lowered to his haunches. “Not all of them, of course. Baines wasn’t the Yes, Sir kind of soldier, was he?”
“He would have had value too.”
“The next few generations are going to be very, very important if we are going to get through this as a species, together, making sacrifices. We have to be very careful about the type of people inside Neon – you understand? We all have to be pulling in the same direction.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Now, Edward. Listen carefully. Your journal – I read a few pages. Jerry –”
I flinched, and Franghorn squeezed.
“Jerry sounds like a very nice man. However, when it comes to rebuilding Neon there’s no place here for homosexuality, from a purely biological imperative standpoint. When the radiation subsides and the natural resources become more amenable to mining again – stage two – again, everyone will need to be pulling in the same direction.”
“What are you saying?” I said, just wanting this to be over with.
“Your skills we could do with; down on the lower levels we’re short on manpower, particularly in the security area. Some districts remain under military guard but that is not optimum. Someone with your experience would be very helpful. What would not be helpful, though, are your genes.”
“Genes? Being gay isn’t a gene.”
“There are a very specific set of circumstances within the DNA make up – so I’m told – that heighten the likelihood of homosexuality. Like I said, from a purely biological standpoint, we don’t want these genes in the pool – at least right now.”
“Well that’s hardly a problem, is it?”
Franghorn stood, towering over me again. “Good, good; so we see eye to eye.”
I shook my
head, incredulous. I couldn’t quite believe the conversation I was having. And then… “I know gay people in this city, and I’ve seen beggars, and the jailhouses full of criminals. Are they all ‘pulling in the same direction’?”
He said nothing; his look said it all.
“My god, how many have you killed? Of your own people?”
“Not only was it necessary from a mathematics point of view, but also as a species. Why not move forward with only the best that we can offer? Sure, in the future, generations from now, we’ll be back where we were, mutations galore – what a colourful species we will be once more! Until then… sacrifices have to be made.”
I was spent.
I couldn’t hear any more.
The numbers – they were too many to comprehend. I couldn’t get a fix in my mind – still can’t. All I knew is I didn’t want to be one of them.
It was then the sky cracked; the sun’s yolk bursting through, from fire into fire. We all looked out at the vista; from night to day in a blink of an eye – oh it was so beautiful, really, a little like when we came in to land all those years ago. I think this was the highest I’d been since then. The planet we’d come to call home hadn’t changed all that much over the years – a little green and blue here and there, all gone by this point of course. We could see for miles across open, rocky desert. One second there and the next not. ‘Not’ as in literally. The shielding kicked in and the plasma hit, hot white, against it, and then it swirled like a close up of the sun itself, as though we were inside the sun, looking out. It lasted for thirty seconds and when it was gone, only darkness remained.
Franghorn walked past me, tapping me on the shoulder. “You in?” he called back over his shoulder. “Because if you’re not, let them end it for you now.”
I guess I was in.
Fire
“We’re going to die, we’re going to die,” repeated the twins.
“Can you not lose it right now? Please?” Jax wasn’t angry – he wanted to join them on the steps and sympathise, embracing.
Not while there’s still a chance.
“What?” asked Scarlett. “What can we do?”
“We’re trapped,” he said, speaking through their tears. “So priority number one is getting the ship’s shielding online.” Slowly but surely the inside of the ship had heated up – no doubt the walls would be warm to the touch. The cavern ceiling may have protected them from the worst of the previous flare, he thought. Sweat trickled from his hairline. He wiped it with the back of his hand, about to shake the girls from their grief, then they held hands and stood, wiping tears away.
“What do you need us to do?”
“Okay, I need one of you in the cockpit to relay readings.”
“No problem,” said Lani, “but you need to show me what to do.”
Jax nodded, and started to climb up. Lani began to follow but Scarlett kept hold of her hand, face pensive. He watched them exchange a look – telepathic thoughts for all he knew – and finally Scarlett let go. She stood, alone and lonely, arms crossed. “Be quick.”
He directed Lani to the forward chair and helped her in. After buckling her in – “To be safe,” – he prompted the boot sequence and pulled up the holo-gauge for the shielding. “This needs to be green to activate. If you see it go green you immediately flick this switch,” he pointed to a toggle switch to their right. “If that fails then the digital override may still be active, in which case I’ll need to activate it at source.”
“And where will you be?” With her hair hanging back towards the ‘floor’ and out of her face, Jax noted the nebulae of freckles across her brow and wondered if they’d match Scarlett’s.
Then the ground rumbled slightly.
More rock fall.
Her breathing quickened and she closed her eyes until she’d regained composure. While her eyes were closed her took her left hand and moved it towards the comm system in the arm rest.
“We can still talk using this,” he said.
“If this has always been here why are we only using it now?”
“I’d never get any peace!” he smiled, then began the climb back down. “You press that button when it goes green and you save our lives.” He looked up at the silhouette of the chair, stray hairs dangling from the top.
“Hey,” echoed her voice around him. “Testing.”
“Working great,” he said, and dropped to the floor below. Metal clanged. His shirt felt clammy in the small of his back. Across the room, Scarlett waited just as he’d left her. “Right, let’s go.”
She followed in silence; each dropping down level by level using his makeshift laddering. He spoke as they descended. “I need you to go right to bottom, to cargo, and find haulage container H23. Which container?”
From above, a quiet voice repeated “H23.”
“In there is two, three hundred metres of cabling – I want you to bring that up to me in the engine room.”
“To the engine room, got it.”
“Good,” he jumped down to the floor above cargo. Beyond the end of the room it would be dark, so he drew his torch from his belt, ready.
Scarlett landed beside him. “You’ll be down there, right?”
He nodded and opened the hatch to cargo. “H23. It’ll be heavy, so roll it out. I only need you to bring me one end.”
“One end, okay,” she said, climbing down.
He turned, alone again; another bout of incredulity hitting him as he made his way towards the engine room. Why now? He passed the table and chairs he’d eaten dinner at for the past few months while running calculations; his notepad lay scribbled to death where he’d left it – equations exploring the possibility of flight. Tea rings overlapped on the table, and among the pillows on the floor in the corner where the girls played, stray clothing held their scent as he passed. He supposed his scent permeated everywhere else – he just couldn’t smell it.
He pushed through the door and turned on the torch. Faint neon lights bloomed where walls met ceiling, but he’d diminished the power allocated to lighting in this area a few months back. It amounted to a long corridor; he had to dodge the ladder rungs at his feet that would have been used to climb up and down had the ship been the right way up. A hatch at the end opened into the engine room.
Here, it would be tricky as he hadn’t properly repurposed the layout to make sense of orientation. He entered and walked down the wall, aiming his oval of light left and right, and up, towards the front end of the engine room. He called it the engine room but it didn’t house any engines – a series of cylindrical generators attached to both floor and ceiling were arranged above his head. From here, a variety of systems could be accessed and analysed and power distributed to them. It would normally be an automatic function of the ship’s controls, but the generators were down and he hadn’t fixed them. Instead, he’d set up a series of relays connected to the native storage cells of the ships. Incredibly, they hadn’t been drained dry when he first discovered them, diverting their charge to power simple ship functions, like disposal. He could still remember the whoosh and crack of the skeletal remains entering the recycler system – the bones of the previous crew. Eight in total. Cracked skulls for some and broken limbs for others, from what must have been a difficult landing. Two had died down here near the doorway, and every time he entered he could still picture the inert ribcages, remembering how he mistook them for moulded manikins briefly before common sense kicked in.
At the far end – the ‘floor’ – he put the torch between his teeth and climbed the rope ladder he’d erected to reach the power distribution unit.
“Hello?” called Lani’s voice from the comm.
“I’m here,” said Scarlett from her position.
“I don’t like being left alone up here.”
“I’ll swap ya,” grunted Scarlett, and the comm when quiet.
When Jax reached the console he twisted around and sat where he could find purchase, jaw aching. If he dropped the torch now he wou
ldn’t be happy. Five or six metres below was all darkness. He unbuckled his trouser belt and removed the belt, then rethreaded it and put it around his head, behind his ears. Then he positioned the torch between the top of his skull and the belt and pulled it taught. Good, he thought, it would hold. Torchlight followed the angle of his head.
He dropped back down to the rungs and wrapped the rope around his bicep, pivoting around so he could activate the console display. The only reason it was off was to conserve energy. Its ambient green and orange glow filtered across his face as he scanned the readouts; all but one of the large storage cells were empty, as expected. He dove into the subsystems and began taking all non-essential systems offline; lighting, power sockets in all rooms bar the laboratory, front and rear lighting, air con, doorways. It was about to get very warm. Then he brought up the shielding unit – situated some one-hundred metres above his head with lattice threads weaving from it, woven into the hull system – and allocated remaining power to it.
The power gauge rose, from 0% to 3%, his heart fluttering as it did so. When it stopped – as he knew it would – he still couldn’t hide his disappointment. He hit the console, as though it would wrench another drop of charge free. And then depressed a comm button. “Lani – is it green yet?”
“No.”
“Okay, hold fire. Scarlett – are you near?”
“Just coming to the engine room.”
“I’ll aim my torch to where I want you,” he said, and climbed down while looking down. He put thoughts of pain and ache from his mind, for there was a lot more to come and this would seem like nothing. Scarlett’s footsteps began to echo from the metal walls, and torchlight joined with his beneath him.
He dropped down and looked around.
“You’re right, it’s heavy,” she said. “Is it long enough for whatever you need it for?”
If Jax’s calculations were correct, and he’d run through them twice, then the answer was “Just about.” It would be tight was the truth. He took the transfer cable and tied it around his waist.
Neon Sands Trilogy Boxset: The Neon Series Season One Page 61