Cold Falling White

by G. S. Prendergast

  I sling my rifle back and grasp a handhold above the hatch. The transport vibrates as it lifts off, blowing snow and ice over me. I have to wipe my mask with my free hand and hang on as Nova banks us away from the chaos below. Across the field I can see another transport lifting off and veering toward us. I lean back to see into the cockpit as Nova flicks switches and dials. Suddenly, over the rumble of the engines, the crackle of radio transmissions buzzes out of the bay speakers.

  There are dozens of voices at first, human voices talking over each other, as Nova searches for the right channel.

  “… also deactivated all the way to the south, at least to the hub north of Salt Lake. Fairchild has launched a squa—”

  “… jamming signal has been disabled, too. We are reading multiple distress—”

  “… er jets from Chilliwack. ETA is—”

  I don’t know what any of that means. I’ve never heard human radio transmissions before. It gives me a strange feeling. Like somehow we’ve tuned into a different time, a time before my people destroyed this world.

  The radio crackles again, and the human voices are replaced by a series of beeps in various tones. I’ve never understood this communication code. It is for pilots only, and almost all the pilots are female.

  Trust. I make the word with my free hand, trying to rise above the disorientation that threatens to overwhelm me. I need to trust Nova. I need to trust these Rogues, but there is so much betrayal among my kind that the urge to simply jump from the hatch and run off, find Dandelion, and whisk her away into the darkness and shelter of the trees is…

  The word… the word is… confusion.

  Confusing. Think. I need to think.

  I really should not have come.

  Nova banks the transport hard, and suddenly we are flying in tandem with another transport whose hull is so close above us that I could nearly reach up and touch it.

  Some kind of alarm goes off, ringing out of the cockpit into the hold. Nova drives her fist into the display panel and the blaring alarm stops. Below us, on the surface, some of the soldiers have noticed that what we’re doing doesn’t seem quite right. They fire at us with the heavy cannon I’ve seen used against human aircraft. Nova banks again, sharply, and the transport above us suddenly brakes, allowing us to overtake it. I lean out of the hatch and watch them descend like a falling stone until they are nearly on top of the cannon position. I can see Thorn hanging out of the hatch as I am.

  Sky spins the transport only a few feet above the ground. Adjusting her pitch upward, she activates the boosters and roasts the cannon and its two Nahx operators in a blazing fireball. The whole position sinks into the lake as the ice melts, and Sky’s transport rockets upward, disappearing into the clouds.

  I close my eyes, just for a second, and try to blink away the afterimage of the fireball.

  Nova dives back down toward the dam. Now I can see the rest of our team running along the crest road, back toward us. We’re still too far away for me to pick out who is who, but I can count. Eight running that should be nine. I scan the surroundings for any stragglers, anyone left behind.

  Get closer, I sign to Nova when she glances back. She accelerates past the crest and doubles back until we are behind them. Now I can see three of the Rogues running backward behind the humans, firing at the soldiers chasing them.

  Eight. Less three. Five. There are five humans. We started with five.

  Dandelion made it.

  Nova descends until she’s practically on top of the thin ice on the west side of the crest. The hovering thrusters blow up clouds of snow and mist until I can barely see, and the turbulence buffets us against the concrete dam.

  “August!” I can barely hear Raven’s voice over the noise of the wind. “August! Take the boys! Take them!”

  Nova slows down so we match the pace at which Raven and the rest are still running. Nudging ahead, she veers to the side until we are across the crest about a hundred feet in front of them. Two Rogues stop and drop to one knee, raising their rifles and firing back at their pursuers. When Mandy and Raven reach us they practically throw Xander through the hatch. I have to step out of the way as he rolls into the hold. Aurora dives in after him. Behind them Tucker pulls Topher along as the Nahx soldiers gain on them.

  “Get inside!” Topher yells at Raven, like an idiot. As though we would leave a human behind after all this.

  Suddenly another transport is firing on us. Charges hit the water, sending up huge geysers, making the air roar and shriek around us. A massive explosion on the crest sends rock and concrete flying everywhere. Nova steadies the transport as I leap out blindly into the cloud of dust and debris and by memory alone manage to get hands on Mandy and Raven.

  “Get Topher!” Raven screams, trying to squirm away from me. I dive back to the transport hatch, dragging them both with me as the dust of the explosion clears.

  “Where are they?” someone says. I grab Xander by the coat to stop him jumping out as we take off.

  “TOPHER!”

  There’s a huge gap in the crest of the dam. Ice and water are pouring through it in a torrent, and beyond that the two boys have turned and run straight toward the Nahx soldiers, emptying their guns, screaming like animals. Sol and Luna are nowhere to be seen.

  “Nova!” I realize I’ve been holding on to Raven’s wrist this whole time. She shoves me away when I let her go. “Get between them!”

  Nova banks us hard, sending Xander rolling away from the hatch and into the ammunitions rack. Darts and rifles and other supplies crash down and slide across the floor.

  “Strap him in!” Raven yells. She and Mandy take positions by the hatch while I do something useful for a change and yank Xander to the back of the hold. There are no safety straps of any kind on transports, so I snatch a set of wrist restraints from the pile of tumbled equipment on the floor.

  “You are not—” Xander tries to protest, but before he has finished his sentence he’s cuffed to the rifle rack and yelling obscenities at me. I stumble back to the hatch just as Nova brings us down on top of the crest again. There’s another blinding explosion and the dam dissolves under and around us until we’re hovering over a rushing river. The boys keep running, and at the last second Tucker grabs his twin around the waist and jumps.

  “No!” Raven screams. Before I can stop her she launches herself out through the hatch. I feel my limbs seize up for as long as it takes to see that she is attached to the transport by a winching cable. Then I’m able to move. I slide down on my knees, hooking one hand to a grip by the hatch, scooping up the cable with the other. Leaning out of the hatch, I can see Raven hanging below, holding on to one of the twins by his wrist. The other one hangs below that, perilously close to the churning torrent of the escaping lake.

  Raven looks up at me and for just an instant she grins, as if this is all part of some grand adventure. And as much as I’d like to live in this moment forever, repeat forever, my shoulders feel like they’re about to pop out of their sockets and everyone behind me is screaming for me to pull them up. I yank on the winch cable and Raven and the twins come flying up toward me, limbs flailing.

  “Give me your hand!” Mandy yells. The formless shouting from the back of the hold takes shape at last.

  “Do you have Topher?!” Xander has slid across toward the hatch as far as he can, vainly stretching out the restraints. “Do you have him? Aurora? Is he there?!”

  Aurora reaches down and grabs Topher by the ankle, flinging him back into the hold. Raven crashes right into me, and Tucker rolls on top of us, sending us splaying in a heap on the floor. Above us Mandy shouts her head count.

  “Raven, Topher, Tucker, Xander, Aurora, Nova, August!”

  There’s another explosion somewhere. The transport rocks violently.

  “Get us out of here!” Raven yells. “Everyone hang on!”

  Nova steers us straight upward, the rapid change of pressure making the breathing tube inflate in my sinuses. My ears pop. Raven untangle
s from me and leaps to her feet, steadying herself as we careen into the clouds.

  “Where are Sol and Luna?” she says, spinning around.

  There’s a beat, a break in time that empties like a broken blood vessel.

  “They didn’t make it,” one of the twins says. The fully human one. Topher. “They were right under the first explosion.”

  I fix my eyes on Nova because I suddenly forget a whole set of words again. I didn’t know Sol and Luna very well. It was hard to talk to the Rogues. They used words I didn’t understand and talked so fast, and I can’t even think of the word. Stopped? It’s like stopped.

  Dead? I finally manage when the word comes to me. It’s an obvious one.

  “Yes.”

  “August, are you okay?” Raven asks.

  Yes.

  Where are Sky and Thorn? Aurora asks.

  Yes Wait. I search for the words. They took another transport.

  Aurora joins Nova in the cockpit, signing quickly. I turn away because I don’t want to see what they are saying about me.

  “August?” Raven reaches for me. “You’re shaking.”

  I’m good. Don’t worry. But she takes my hand. Behind her, the others are distracted with the humans. Topher’s nose is bleeding and he’s yelling at his brother to leave him alone, and Xander is complaining about still being shackled to the weapons locker, and Mandy is shouting at them to shut up. I look down as Raven gives me a small smile.

  “Too many humans?” she says.

  One is a good number, I say, but I’m not sure she understands.

  A dark shadow crosses the open hatch. Instinctively I mash Raven to the floor, covering her, but when I look up I can see Thorn standing in the open hatch of the other transport, waving, flicking her head back like she’s laughing at me.

  “Get off,” Raven says, shoving me again. She raises her hand to wave back at Thorn.

  There’s a flash of light, an earsplitting screech, and the other transport suddenly explodes in a fireball.

  “NO!” someone screams.

  “What was that?!”

  Raven and I are on the other side of the hold, her pressed against the wall behind my back.

  “Nova, get us out of here!”

  “What is it?!” Topher yells.

  Mandy has staggered into the cockpit. Over the noise and the ringing in my ears I can barely hear what they’re saying. I watch Nova and Aurora instead as they sign quickly, frantically.

  Humans. Firing on us.

  Through the hatch in the distance I see a human jet shoot past.

  “Dive down, Nova!” Topher shouts. “That’s a Hornet! They can’t maneuver for shit at low altitudes!”

  Nova dives, sending us all sprawling again and trying not to roll out of the hatch. I manage to get my hand on the emergency lock button and the heavy blast panel comes down, plunging the hold into darkness, the only light now from the narrow window in the cockpit. After a moment I flick on one of my shoulder lights.

  “August, you’re crushing me.”

  Somehow I still have Raven tightly clasped in one arm. I release her and she stumbles into the cockpit just as an alarm starts blaring.

  “What’s that?”

  I’ve lost track of who is talking. That might have been Tucker.

  “It’s locked on to us!”

  “What has?”

  “A fucking air-to-air missile!” Raven screams back from the cockpit. “Jesus Christ, why can’t this day be over?”

  The pitch of the transport suddenly tilts and we dive so fast that the change in pressure fills my nose and throat with fluid. I can feel my breathing apparatus trying to suck it away, my armor trying to adjust the pressure in my lungs and blood so I don’t pop like a bubble of snot. My head throbs with pain and my armor washes my insides with something numbing that makes me lose my senses. Dimly, I see someone straining up in the cockpit to pull a lever. There’s a loud hiss and the pressure stabilizes. The pain in my head dissipates mercifully, though I’m still trying to cough away the fluid in my throat. I can see Nova and Aurora also convulsing as they try to control the transport’s steep dive.

  “Nova!” Raven screams.

  “Whoa, is that a good idea? Oh shit. Hold on to something!”

  I dive down and gather the twins into my arms, sliding across the floor to where Xander is still shackled to the gun locker.

  “BRACE FOR IMPACT!”

  We hit something, hard. The sounds of the engines change, becoming muffled. Then there’s a low rumble coming from above us and we’re slowly shaken as though by rolling…

  Water, I sign.

  “We’re underwater?” Xander says. “Now you need to unhook me, dude. You really do. I don’t want to drown in here.”

  I press my thumb onto the latch sensor of the shackles and they snap open.

  The transport rocks gently as we crowd into the cockpit. Outside the window everything is a dark greenish gray, with sediment and small things floating around us. Nova flicks something on a screen and it lights up with a radar image of the surface above us. The remains of the missile show up as a ripple on the water, the single fighter jet a distant spot circling around as we all hold our breath. Finally, after descending and doing a slow loop around the reservoir, the fighter peels off eastward and disappears from the scope.

  “It was probably a scout,” a twin says. I turn to look properly at him. It’s the human one. Topher. “They would have been permanently scrambled to take out the power station as soon as the web came down. A single pilot with a full load would have been plenty. If they knew, that is.”

  “They obviously knew,” Tucker says. “What about the other Nahx transports?”

  Sky took them out, Nova signs. Raven translates and we all breathe in and out together as though from relief and recognition that Sky and Thorn just died on a mission they could have very well refused. I suddenly realize something I hadn’t noticed.

  Where is Ash?

  “He’s dead too, I think,” Raven says. “We got attacked under the dam and he was washed away.”

  Nova’s fingers just touch the back of my hand. I don’t know if I can even grieve for any of these Rogues. I know they helped me, but I don’t feel like I’m one of them, or one of anything, really. And yet when Nova’s clicky breathing catches softly and she reaches for Aurora, I think I must still be mirroring her because my own hand rises up to rest on Raven’s shoulder.

  “Uh, Nova?” Xander says, turning back toward the hold. “Nova? This isn’t good.”

  Murky water is pouring out of the floor vents.

  Nova spins back to the control panel, throwing switches and levers so fast, her hands blur. The transport engines gurgle and rumble, and more water sloshes in.

  “I don’t think these are amphibious,” someone says, unhelpfully.

  The transport tilts, sending us sliding back into the hold, now up to our knees in water.

  Lift? I say to Raven, but she waves me away.

  “I’m fine.”

  The transport banks to the side, creating a wave that soaks Topher and Xander up to the shoulders. I pull them up until they can grab on to handholds above the hatch and hang there, the water still swirling around their feet.

  “Nova, can you get us out of this?” Topher says.

  Wait, wait, she signs without turning back.

  Finally we seem to move, but the pressure regulator fails at the same moment because my ears suddenly burn as though I’m being stabbed. The transport shakes violently, churning the water into a froth around our feet. After what seems an eternity, the deep dark outside the cockpit window changes to dull green, then glowing pale gray, and finally bright white light as we nose out of the water, lingering there, still gripped by the surface, until finally Aurora smashes her hand down on a switch and the distinct roar of the afterburners rings so loud, my teeth ache.

  We limp upward as Nova and Aurora struggle to get the hovering engines engaged enough to keep us airborne.

&nb
sp; Open the hatch, Nova signs at me.

  I slosh over and activate the hatch control, but of course it doesn’t respond. All the console lights are flickering madly and short-circuiting. The manual release is below the hatch and now under thigh-deep water. It’s hard to think with my head throbbing and my ears on fire and my breathing tube pulsing and writhing around, but I drop to my knees and dive under the water, feeling around blindly for the access panel.

  My armor engages a protocol I’ve never felt before. I stop breathing and something switches, as though a backup system has engaged, and I feel myself fill up with thick, syrupy dullness, like I could sink to the bottom of the lake and just wait there forever for someone to rescue me. This is a bad design, I manage to think, on a planet with so much water, to shut down like this, but somehow, as though guided by instructions I don’t remember anything about, my fingers close on the latch of the access panel.

  Above me, through the heaviness of the water and the blood filling my ears, I can hear Raven’s voice.

  “August? August!”

  The panel pops open; a spring function shoots the manual release lever into my hand. The water makes the lever slippery but I yank on it with both hands, and nearly get washed out into the lake when the hatch shoots open and the water cascades out.

  Raven is looking down at me when I roll away from the hatch.

  “Are you okay?”

  Perfect, I sign. Perfect forever.

  The bright sky behind her outlines her head like a gold-and-silver halo as I clamber up onto my knees. Everyone appears to be standing, wet but alive.

  “We should get out of here, Nova,” Raven says. “We’re literally sitting ducks out on the lake like this.”

  Nova signs back at her too fast for me to understand most of it, but I recognize engine and restart and water, repeat water, so that gives me a fair idea. We hover there, a few feet above the surface, rumbling as the air vents rattle and gurgle and Nova tilts us so the rest of the water can sluice out of the hold.

  The engines cough and judder and die.

  “Nova?”

  We drop down before the reserve hovering thrusters engage, leaving us mere inches above the rippling waves. Nova’s hands fly over the controls and finally the engines groan back to life, rumbling and whining loudly, frothing the water beneath us, but over that sound…