Elysium Shining

by Terri Kraemer

  Dasos noted that the vessel moved slowly compared to what it would have been doing in outer space because it was using power to stay in the air. He wondered if the ships in orbit weren’t firing because of the amount of collateral damage they would have risked in doing so.

  While he watched, he noticed a consistent pattern with the artillery, as well as a rhythm to the fire. The cannons alternated between each side, and the portside one had gone off. Dasos looked around the main floor of the library and found the Hulda’fi pistol on the ground. He stepped outside with it and stayed out of sight.

  Star. The student store was hit. The boat turned counter-clockwise.

  Port. The blast hit the elevated terrace behind one wall, missing the bench below. Now the craft was turning toward the library entrance.

  On his left side, the pilot’s right, Dasos took aim and timed himself. He fired at the target with his pistol. The starboard cannon went off. The blast from the Hulda’fi pistol reached the opposing shot as it discharged. The timing was perfect, too perfect, and it caused the starboard cannon to break apart along with the hole it blew in the side of the craft.

  Huh, I think that was a natural twenty.

  The pilot readjusted and took aim at Dasos. He knew which gun could go off, of course, but not when it would go off. He took aim, hoping that he would luck out again.

  A pair of rockets flew in and hit the port side of the craft before it could shoot at him. Despite using his Aelfen sight, Dasos took the explosion as the sign to shoot before he realized what had actually happened. The engines in the boat’s rear growled with a heavy strain. Dasos stared at the pilot in the eye as much as he could, and he aimed the gun at them.

  Before any more rockets could come the pilot landed the craft and shut it down. They raised their hands.

  It was a while before the Peacekeepers came to arrest the Hulda’fi pilot. As they unmasked the Aelf and took her away, Dasos received a call on his cell-comm. He took it out and answered it upon seeing his father’s name.

  “Hello?” said Dasos.

  Keft’aerak said, “Dasos, is your sister with you?”

  “No, but I was about to grab Tonny so we can meet up and have them transport to you. Why do you ask?”

  “Your mother fought Soror Valide. We’re treating her for her wounds now, but Zoey gave her the material transference beacon and sent her up alone.”

  “What? Zoey told me she was grabbing her things.”

  “They were all in the main plaza by the student lounge. I need to know if Zoey is alright.”

  “Oh, no.”

  From the distance he could see the lounge and adjacent seating area. The entire side of the plaza had collapsed and was now a burning ruin.

  * * *

  Il’lyse knew this campus well, and thought that she had learned a good deal of its secrets that were meant for emergencies. When the Hulda’fi fired upon them, Il’lyse and Zoi’ne dashed for the tables of the outdoor seating area. A second cannon shot hit the corner of the student lounge, possibly by mistake, before a third one demolished the roofing that hung overhead in the seating area.

  Both girls sat beneath one table when the stiern-boat turned to fire upon other areas around the university. It moved away, giving them time to move if they had a place to go. Il’lyse pointed to the student lounge, where a hole had been blown in the front corner. Judging by its size, either one of them could slip inside. Yes, that was the best place, Zoi’ne’s gaze be damned.

  Il’lyse ran for the lounge, the other girl following, and she kicked away a shard of glass in the portion of the window that had shattered around the hole. The hole had taken up part of the window and a portion of the wall beside it.

  “Get in,” she said. “There’s a hatch in the floor.”

  Zoi’ne did as she said, and Soror Valide turned away from the window. She had no intention of leaving with this girl. She had no intention of staying alive. The galaxy needed one of them, and it was the younger girl. That much was clear.

  Two of the Hulda’fi limped into view from the direction in which Soror Valide had beaten them to a pulp once already. She entered a fighting pose when she realized that the one to the back was whispering. Seconds later she could hear the stiern-boat returning to this area.

  She wasn’t frightened by this. Soror Valide, for the time she had left, sought one last retribution against her betrayers. She leapt at the two Hulda’fi and pummeled her former sisters. She had turned to deal what she thought would be the final blow in her life when something grabbed her waist and yanked her across a blinding threshold. It was dark. Her body hit a flat surface that she couldn’t see, her sense of direction was at a loss, and Zoi’ne fell on top of her. The cannon blasts sounded and shook the world all around her. Then the student lounge collapsed.

  Minutes passed. They were both lucky to be alive. At least that was what Il’lyse would have said if she was welcoming of such fortune. The girl who called herself her sister saw things different from her, and Il’lyse didn’t have it in her to argue with Zoey any longer. So she inspected their surroundings with a pounding headache.

  Sections of a couple disconnected walls remained standing about as well as a man with a broken back. Rubble surrounded the girls from the front half of the building now that it had been obliterated. Il’lyse couldn’t feel one of her legs. Zoi’ne was pressing her face against Il’lyse’s shoulder, which felt damp.

  Il’lyse attempted to sit up, but the other girl pushed her back down on the floor. “Stay down,” she whispered.

  Glass popped, flames hissed, and a few distorted voices laughed from the other side of the barricade. Il’lyse didn’t see the ones who were laughing, but knew that they couldn’t see her or Zoi’ne either. The warped voices faded, but the flames grew in seconds. The fire had to have come from bottles that the girls in the Kroke Team had found nearby, and then ignited before throwing them at the rubble. They assumed that their former superior was dead, or close to it. That was the only explanation that Il’lyse could come up with.

  The craft in the air had fallen silent as well, though she had no clue or guesses as to what had happened with that one.

  “You’re a fucking moron,” Zoi’ne said with her face still pressed against Il’lyse’s shoulder. “Why are my siblings as bad as I am at getting into trouble?”

  “Why did you save me?” Il’lyse asked.

  “I’ve wanted a family my whole life. I wanted a real one. It’s thanks to you that I got to have one. But Mom, Dad, and Dasos? They’re your damn family too, whether you know it or not. I never once replaced you. I never wanted to be in your shadow. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t you see the family you’ve always had?” She lifted her face and stared into Il’lyse’s eyes.

  She had no arguments to use against that, as hard as she tried. “Fine,” Il’lyse said as she turned her gaze away. “Take me and do whatever you wish.”

  “Il’lyse,” the other girl said. She stood and checked the area outside. “Come on. There’s no telling if or when the Hulda’fi will come back. Didn’t you say something about a hatch in here?”

  “There’s a secret tunnel that runs from here to a service tunnel beneath the street to the north.” She pointed to one corner of the ruined lounge. “That exit only opens on this side unless someone is so stupid that they’d bomb it and cave in the entire street.”

  As she explained this Il’lyse sat up and removed the wood sitting on her right leg above the ankle. It was heavy and might have explained why her leg felt numb.

  Zoi’ne searched for the hatch in the backside of the building, meanwhile. Judging by the sounds of the girl moving the rug over and shaking a thin, metallic handle, she didn’t take long to find it.

  “You’re sure this isn’t a broom closet, right?” Zoi’ne said as Il’lyse slid closer to give her blood a chance to circulate through the leg.

  “A broom closet?” said Il’lyse, bending a lip. She placed a hand on her hip and the other in the air. �
��Why a broom closet of all things?”

  “Long story. This appears to be unlocked.”

  “Great. I’m ready to go when you are—aah!”

  She had attempted to stand. The sudden pressure on her right leg made it feel as though something long and sharp stabbed straight through her foot and up to her knee. The pain made her fall again. It was greater than any injury she had received or felt in recent memory.

  Zoi’ne ran to her and looked between Il’lyse’s face and the right leg that the older sister was clutching. Zoi’ne pulled off the boot and slid the right pant leg as much as the durable material could let her, which wasn’t much. Frustrated, the younger girl fetched something small next to the burning rubble, coughing while she crouched to stay down low. Zoi’ne came back and pinched the material over Il’lyse’s knee with one hand. Then she swiped at it with the shard of glass in her other hand.

  It barely had any effect at all, causing Il’lyse to huff at her. Il’lyse grabbed a ring from her harness that she had stolen from Lady Tunderek after the last time she used it on her suit. She used it to cut the suit around her knee. Her little sister pulled the fabric from her ankle. Il’lyse’s leg was bruised, but it felt as if that entire mound of rubble was actively crushing it from all sides. Cold, infinite beyond, Il’lyse wanted to die right now.

  Seconds later she heard Zoi’ne pull something else from the rubble. In her hand was a beam of wood, and she walked toward Il’lyse with a sour-faced expression.

  Yes, she was ready for this. Il’lyse spread her arms out to welcome the inevitable.

  The wood cracked loud.

  [ 50]

  “Wh-what are you doing?” Il’lyse asked.

  Zoey had broken the piece of wood over her leg. The movies made it seem easier and far less painful than it actually was, and that was after picking a beam that looked suitable for what she was planning to do with it. She knelt down beside her sister and pressed the shortened lengths of wood against the sides of Il’lyse’s injured leg.

  “I’m making a splint for your leg,” Zoey said. “It doesn’t look really bad, but it is probably broken. Hold these for me, will you?”

  Her sister grabbed each piece of wood, allowing Zoey to use the severed pant leg and tie it to the top portion of the wood. She frowned at the bottom half since it wasn’t secure, and then she turned her eyes to the other leg. Zoey held her left hand out while tugging on the fabric with her right.

  Il’lyse gestured with one of her own wrists. The ring was inside that hand. Zoey placed her left hand beneath it and caught the ring once it dropped. It took her a couple tests to figure out how to make the incision that she needed, and a moment longer to tie the second pant leg around the lower end of the splint. Once it was done Zoey felt as though she was forgetting some major step to this, but decided that she had done plenty until she could get Il’lyse some help.

  “Now what?” said Il’lyse.

  “Well, the passage out of here doesn’t seem all that narrow so I’ll hold you up on the left side to keep weight off of your right. Oh, wait, here you go.”

  She removed her bag and then her hoody. She wrapped the jacket around Il’lyse so that her sister looked less conspicuous once the two of them were out in the open. Zoey crammed one of the boots inside of her book bag, and checked to see if anything in there had broken. The screens on her phone and computer weren’t cracked, but any further examination would have required her to take her things out of the bag and be thorough. Meanwhile, the fire was growing larger and the smoke becoming thicker.

  Zoey slung the bag back over her shoulder while Il’lyse tossed her old mask and gloves into the pyre. She grabbed her sister, and took the steps down into the tunnel as slow as she needed to help Il’lyse get down there. The light from the world above didn’t go for long, and darkness awaited them.

  “How’d you find out about this place?” said Zoey.

  “I once hooked up with the student aide who used to work upstairs,” said Il’lyse. “It doesn’t look like anything’s changed down here in the last couple revolutions.”

  “So you actually came down here?”

  “Again, once.” There was a coy expression on her face.

  “Was this before or after you ended up with Buska’vild?”

  “That’s actually a good question, actually. I’m not sure I remember. Hopefully that wormhole I opened in the classroom, back there, was enough to deal with her.”

  “That was a wormhole? I thought they were unstable at best the last time we had a chance to talk.”

  “Surprise. The technician I kidnapped turned out to be better than the Lord and Lady expected. We . . . they are using wormholes to get around the known galaxy now. Like I said, hopefully the one I opened was enough to deal with Buska.”

  “It wasn’t. I ended up fighting her. She told me that you and Mom were fighting, so I came to stop you both after I was done with her. I don’t think she’ll be standing any time soon.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Il’lyse stare at her. She was too busy looking forward in the growing darkness to guess what was running through her sister’s mind. They walked until Zoey heard a buzzing sound from her phone.

  “Please don’t be Mom,” Zoey said.

  “What?” said Il’lyse.

  “I got a message on my phone, or cell-comm as you call it here. I kind of, sort of, did something I wasn’t supposed to with that transmat beacon. I was supposed to go up to Dad’s ship with Tonny using that thing, but I activated it and sent Mom up alone.”

  Il’lyse chortled. “At least Tonny has a cell-comm that Dad’s crew can use to track her easily and bring her up.”

  “You don’t know yet?”

  “Know what?”

  She thought about it for a second. “You know what? I’ll let you find out what I mean when you see her.” Then Zoey stopped. She tried to reach back into her bag, but couldn’t quite make it like she intended.

  “What are you doing now?” said Il’lyse.

  “Trying, failing, to grab my phone,” Zoey said. “It’s inside the smaller pouch of my bag next to my wallet.”

  “I’ll get it. Here.” She plucked it from the bag and held it in front of Zoey. “Is this right? It looks like a smaller version of our personal computers.”

  “That’s the one. Tong-Chang tinkered with my old phone from Earth and made it compatible with Hoshi-Lacartan systems. Now I need communication relays instead of radio towers. I guess the university’s inter-server going down doesn’t prevent this thing from working.”

  “I wonder how many Hulda’fi died when the inter-server went down.”

  “I’m not sure. I’m hoping Tonny doesn’t find out the exact number. It hurt her to learn she killed multiple people at once.”

  “Tonny? So I see.”

  The message on Zoey’s phone came from Dasos. It read, “Zoey, if you are alive, please answer.”

  She typed her response, “I’m fine. I’m heading home. See you soon.”

  As they continued down the tunnel Zoey held up the phone to light up a couple meters of floor in front of her. She pressed the home button once every minute so that the light wouldn’t go out. She didn’t check the battery, but she was positive that it had plenty of power to get them somewhere with better lighting.

  There was a valve at the end of the tunnel against the door. Il’lyse stood back and let Zoey turn the handle, which opened the way out. The door swung outward. Both of the girls stepped out of the darker passageway to find a tunnel that was lined with lime-green tiles and indistinct lights on its sides and ceiling. Zoey closed the door and saw what her sister had meant earlier by it only opening on one side. Once the exit closed, it blended in with the tiles.

  “Where to?” said Il’lyse.

  “The condo,” Zoey said. “Dasos, Tonny, and I live there together.”

  “The same one as when I left? This way then. There is a ladder that can take us up, not far from the trolley. What?”

&n
bsp; “Ladders?” Zoey pointed down at her sister’s leg.

  “I can climb without using the one leg. Come on. The sooner we get you home, the sooner I can figure out my next move.”

  “You can figure that out after dinner.”

  Inside of the service tunnel there were scores of darker utility boxes and pipes, all with orange reflector rings, connected to points on the surface that Zoey couldn’t see from down here. They were laid separate from the sewer lines, which were labeled with warning labels that contained the words “refuse management” in big letters. The boxes and pipes that Zoey saw above the floor, however, were spaced in a manner that made her wonder if they connected to the street lights and crosswalk barriers.

  When they reached the ladder Zoey climbed it first to open the way above to the street. She was reminded of the manhole covers on Earth, but this one was a rectangular opening. There was a lever and gear system in place to one side of the opening adjacent to the ladder. She activated it and descended.