“But there could be other stations,” Siv said, and Gosta gave her a thankful smile.
Phasma regarded her warriors, her helmet close to her side on the ground. “We could spend all night talking about the things that we fear may come to pass, but I’d rather eat and sleep. If something is coming, we’ll fight it, but there’s no point in inviting trouble. Life here is no more dangerous than it was in the Scyre. It’s simply a different kind of danger.”
“It does take getting used to,” Torben admitted. “All the sand. Endless nothing. Shifting, blowing, itching. At least on the rocks, you know where you stand. Nice, solid things, rocks.”
No one could argue his point. For a man of more muscle than brain, he sometimes made much sense.
Siv pulled food and water out of her pack, settling in between Torben and Gosta as the troopers kept their own company in the other large tent. The structures were open on the sides, but they provided a little shelter from the constant howling of the wind. The metallic plastic flapped with each gust, but the stakes were planted deeply, thanks to yet another skill demonstrated by the troopers. Phasma and Brendol went to the vehicle, silent but secretive, and Siv wondered if perhaps they were finding comfort in each other. Phasma had not mated among the Scyre, at least not as far as Siv knew, and there was little chance for privacy among the rocks.
Thinking about better times, she leaned against Torben’s shoulder as she chewed on her jerky.
That night, blessedly, nothing terrible happened. It was a rare enough thing anywhere on Parnassos.
—
The next morning, they woke up to a day that was already sizzling at dawn. The dark shape on the horizon had neither moved nor changed, and they all watched it as they sipped water and chewed their breakfast. They made good progress, thanks to the vehicles, and Siv had grown accustomed to rolling with the machine’s movement. The monotony of the sand was a strange thing, and as they got closer and closer to the dark blot, it grew bigger and bigger. So big that it was clear it wasn’t one beast or one building, but the thing Brendol called a city.
“On most habitable planets, beings gather in large groups to live together, build domiciles, and share resources,” he explained. “Some planets are nothing but buildings and cities. Others have enclaves, capitals, towns, villages.”
“What is this one?” Phasma asked, staring through her quadnocs.
Brendol stopped the vehicle, held out one hand, and wiggled his fingers, and Phasma put the quadnocs in his palm. He frowned as he looked back and forth, left to right.
“A city, but a primitive one. What worries me is that bit in the middle, standing high over everything else.”
“What’s so bad about that?” Gosta asked.
Brendol pulled down the quadnocs to stare at the girl disdainfully. “When everything is at one level except for one building, that generally means one of two things, neither one good. The first possibility is a church representing a religion that seeks to reach some silly god in the sky, and the second is a king or despot desperate to maintain his holdings. Either way, you’ve got someone with resources who thinks they’re superior to the people they rule. There is no greater enemy to justice than a little king on a little hill.”
Phasma wordlessly reached for the quadnocs and looked again as she chewed her jerky. “Does your First Order not seek to rule, then? Yet you seem to be opposed to ruling.”
Brendol grunted. “There is a difference. The First Order wishes to bring equality to all and destroy the petty politics and rotten bureaucracy that plague the galaxy. I speak of an enlightened government of thousands of people, working on behalf of billions of unenlightened people. In a place like this, however, the decisions are being made by one person only, or perhaps a small handful of wealthy despots. And their first interest is in lining their own pockets and maintaining their golden lifestyles.”
Siv watched him silently. Something told her that Brendol was either concealing some truth or directly lying, but she wasn’t about to challenge him. His words were too pretty, his stated motives too pure. Even though Siv couldn’t read Phasma’s face through her helmet, she could tell her leader likewise was not convinced.
“And so what does the First Order do with such little kings?” Phasma asked.
Brendol stared over the sand as if he could see straight to the heart of the city.
“We destroy them,” he answered.
Phasma put down her quadnocs. The way she looked from each member of her party, to their gear, then back to the city beyond told Siv that she was making plans. Her warriors were familiar with this look, as it generally signaled a new strategy.
“We need to go around it,” she finally said. “Way around it. We have all the supplies we require. Whoever lives there will only keep us from our goals.”
“May I see?” Siv held out her hand for the quadnocs.
Phasma gave her the ’nocs, along with a sharp nod that suggested any questions she had had better be intelligent. Siv often helped Phasma with her plans and only participated in the discussion when she was sure her ideas were good. This time, she looked, and what the quadnocs revealed was startling.
“What’s all the green?” she asked. Because green was everywhere, and not the dusty green of lichen, but a vibrant and poisonous green. To the naked eye, the city appeared like a wavering black smudge, but the ’nocs showed green walls outside, green buildings inside, more green than Siv had ever seen in her entire life, which had heretofore included only the green lines in Terpsichore Station, a few people’s eyes, and some ancient artifacts and gems hidden in the Nautilus. The greenest things in the Scyre were grayish mosses and sea veg on the verge of black.
“Green means plants.” Brendol drank his water, more than a Scyre would, and wiped the excess from his mouth as if it were unimportant. “They call it an oasis. A green place in the middle of the desert. There’s usually an underground spring, or perhaps the pool where a river ends. Sometimes, those who wander in the desert too long imagine such a place and stumble to their death chasing a shimmering dream that isn’t really there.”
“But it’s there.”
“It is, yes.”
“They must be very rich,” Gosta said. “With that much water.”
Phasma scoffed. “Who cares about their riches? Everything we need is in Brendol’s ship, and getting there before anyone else can is our first priority. What do we want with some green city? It’s still on Parnassos. The planet is still dying. Nothing else good has lasted here. Within ten years, even that spring will dry up, and the plants will wither and die, the people along with them. That city is nothing but a corpse that doesn’t know it’s dead yet.”
Torben put a hand up to his mask to shield his eyes from the sun. “Left or right, then?”
“Left,” Brendol said.
Just as Phasma said, “Right.”
The hot air grew tense. No one said anything. The troopers hovered nearby on their speeder bikes, gently drifting back and forth.
“Why do you think left?” Phasma asked.
“Because of our angle in relation to the city. It seems a slightly shorter route.”
“I say right because we won’t have to correct so far to reach your ship.”
The troopers must’ve sensed the disturbance, as they rode their speeders closer, their hands on their blasters. Torben exhaled and adjusted the weapons at his hips. Gosta had hopped off the vehicle to stand, and her fingers danced over her new blaster, her eyes unwavering on Phasma.
“Splitting up is a bad idea,” Siv ventured.
Phasma didn’t move a muscle. Even with her mask, it was clear she was staring at the city, her sharp mind considering every gambit.
“Left, then,” Phasma said.
The Scyre folk relaxed, but Siv was stunned. She and Torben locked eyes, and she shrugged. They’d never seen their leader give in so easily. Not even to Keldo. Still, they knew better than to question her. Once she’d made her proclamation in that voice, you w
ent with her or you were left behind. And being left behind here meant certain death.
“Let’s be off, then,” Brendol said, and he did sound satisfied.
No one else had left the vehicle, but Gosta seemed reluctant to get back in. The girl seemed fascinated and charmed by the speeder bikes, or possibly by the troopers who rode them.
Phasma noticed Gosta skulking closer to the speeder and called to her.
“Gosta! Pull your weight.”
“I was wondering if it would be possible for me to ride on the speeder with Elli,” Gosta said, trying to sound brave and bold. “It would be good, if another one of us knew how to ride. In case we lose someone.”
Phasma, again, looked to Brendol.
“I have no quarrel with the idea,” he said. “Although the girl can’t simply make up silly nicknames as if my troopers are pets. She’s correct, though: We must plan on losing people. It’s a long journey yet. LE-2003 can teach the girl. Let’s take a break before we continue.”
As Siv distributed sips of water and strips of meat, she surreptitiously watched the youngest Scyre warrior interact with Elli. Siv had taken little notice of the troopers: Except for the rare times they removed their helmets—and their brief stay in the Con Star mining facility—they seemed completely identical, other than very slight expressions of build or height. They mostly kept to themselves, and Brendol frowned on them showing too much personality or being too casual in their manners. Still, Elli didn’t seem terrible, and she was pointing to parts of the speeder bike as Gosta, grinning like a fool, straddled the seat. Siv’s mother had told her stories of her own childhood, and a big feature had been that children had once had freedom to play and time to do nothing. In the Scyre these days, everyone worked from the moment they were able, even if the only work was flapping a stick at birds to keep them away from drying meat or sea veg, a job Frey had done as a toddler strapped into a net harness securely hung from the rocks. Siv realized she’d never seen Gosta smile like this before—her expression open and unguarded and her eyes alight.
Putting a hand to her belly, Siv lifted up a prayer that they would get to Brendol’s ship alive and intact. She’d told no one her own secret yet, as most children ended in blood before they began, but she had more reason than most to wish for miracle transport off the tomb Parnassos was swiftly becoming.
As they finished their meal, the Scyre folk paused to watch Gosta take her first short trip on the speeder bike, zooming over the dunes and laughing with joy. It was a lovely moment, and one Siv still treasures. Especially after what happened later.
“We haven’t got all day,” Brendol barked, and they peeled their eyes away from the spectacle and climbed into the vehicle to continue their trip around the green city. They’d taken turns sitting in the turret by the passenger seat, which was mounted with the heaviest gun Siv had seen yet, something that Brendol called “disturbingly destructive.” So far, they hadn’t used it, but he had tested it, briefly, and the way it spit fire into the sand was impressive. When they’d gone out to see the damage, it had been a good five minutes’ walk to the scorch marks, where they’d dug up twisted lightning bolts of cloudy gray glass. Brendol explained that the laser was so hot that it had melted the sand, and Phasma had taken more turns in the turret than anyone else despite the heat caused by its protective overhead dome.
She rode there now, her helmet on and her hand wrapped around the massive gun’s grip. When Siv looked to her leader, she felt reassured that they would accomplish their goal. Hope was a new feeling for her, and without Gosta in the backseat, she took the chance to curl her fingers around Torben’s and lean her head against the reassuring warmth of his shoulder. Feeling safe was also unusual, and she wanted to enjoy it for as long as she could.
Brendol steered left to give the city a wide berth. Phasma made no further comment, merely swung her gun around to face the nearing green wall. Siv didn’t like the look of the plants, which the quadnocs showed to be long vines twisting with wide, green leaves and peppered with tiny pink flowers. Two of the speeder bikes zoomed ahead, keeping point at the front left and right of the GAV but with plenty of room between them. The last speeder stayed in back, protecting them from the rear. As Siv watched Gosta’s hair fly out behind her, the girl’s arms wrapped around Elli’s middle as they caromed over the gray sand, something caught her attention just ahead of the speeders. She didn’t know what it was, couldn’t identify what made her call out.
“Stop! That thing—”
Brendol had just started to bark, “What?” when Elli’s speeder tipped, nose-first, and disappeared into the sand, throwing the trooper and Gosta into the air.
“PT-2445, pull up!” Brendol shouted into the comm on his wrist as he braked the GAV hard, sending up a shower of sand when it slid to a halt.
The remaining speeder bike skidded sideways and spun to a stop, Pete’s boots landing on the ground in a puff of gray. He immediately leapt off the speeder and ran for where Elli was sprawled in the sand. Before he could reach her, he disappeared completely.
“PT-2445, report!”
“There’s a ditch, sir. Full of spikes. I fell between them, luckily. Didn’t break anything. LE-2003’s speeder is down here, along with…damn. Dozens of vehicles. And bodies. Old bones on the spikes.”
“HF-0518, you heard him. Move ahead with caution. Get PT-2445 out of that ditch.”
Phasma dropped down out of the turret.
“Siv, take the gun. I’m going to get Gosta.”
Siv nodded and climbed up; a wave of heat swept over her from the plastic bubble, but she ignored it as she scrambled into the seat and scanned the area where Elli and Gosta had fallen. Gosta was sitting up now, her mask off, rubbing a bloody place in her hair and looking confused.
“I’m going with Phasma,” Torben said.
Phasma bounded down from the GAV, a blaster in one hand and her ax in the other. Torben followed her, his club and ax ready, as if he’d completely forgotten the blaster in a holster at his belt. Brendol sat behind the wheel, Siv noted, and although he barked commands into his wrist comm, he didn’t so much as put a hand on his door.
As she gripped the gun in trembling hands and tried to focus on her people through the haze of heat and sand, something flashed in the clear, shiny plastic overhead. By the time she’d spun around in the turret, it was too late.
“Brendol—we’re being attacked from behind!”
She couldn’t see what was happening with Phasma, but Torben told her about it, later. Phasma ran to the ditch and leapt over it, barely making it across and scrabbling out on the other side in the slippery sand. When Torben tried to follow her, he wasn’t able to complete the jump; he was big and bulky, and Phasma was lighter and faster. He tumbled down into the sand, sliding between the spikes and landing among the bones and rusted metal hulks of ancient vehicles. When he spotted Pete reaching out of the pit toward Huff’s outstretched glove, Torben ran and boosted Pete up so he could clamber out. But when Torben held up his own hand for help out of the trench, the stormtroopers had already left. He was alone in the pit, which was too deep for him to climb out of without aid.
“Phasma!” Torben called. “I’m trapped down here. Is Gosta safe?”
“Minor head wound,” Phasma called back. “She’ll live. Is there anything down there that you can use to get out?”
Torben shielded his eyes and scouted around.
“Their speeder bike. It’s still a little…floaty.”
“So ride it out.”
“It’s not that floaty.”
“Lift it up to me, then.”
Phasma appeared at the opposite side of the ditch, and Torben obligingly hefted the speeder until its pointy nose hovered within Phasma’s reach.
“We need to make a bridge out of it,” she explained.
Together they maneuvered the hobbled speeder so that it spanned the pit, the nose on one side and the rear on the other.
“Support it from the bottom while I t
ake her across,” Phasma said, for the ditch went so far in either direction that she couldn’t just go around it. The trap was meant to catch everything that came near, but they learned more about that later.
Torben knew his role: He was the muscle. He’d been trained from birth to maximize his strengths to help his people. So he moved to the belly of the speeder and held it steady, supporting it from below.
“Ready?” Phasma asked.
“What, you want to wait awhile?”
As he held up the speeder bike, Phasma appeared at the edge with a now unconscious Gosta draped over her arms, the girl’s head bleeding freely. Torben strained to hold the speeder steady as Phasma ran across it with what Siv called superhuman agility, carrying the younger girl. Once Phasma was across, she stopped.
“Now use the speeder bike to climb out on this side. I have to get her to safety.” She looked toward the GAV and went stiff. “We’re under attack. Hurry.”
And then she was gone. Torben did as she’d commanded, heaving half of the speeder bike against the side of the pit like a ladder and climbing up it to get out. When he landed on the surface above, he heard the ongoing battle and pushed to his feet, racing back to where Siv was fighting.
As for Siv, she finally got to feel the destructive power of the GAV’s gun. The attacking force comprised several GAVs just like theirs, each one branded with the same Con Star Mining Corporation logo. But the vehicles had been embellished with spikes and chains, turned from simple surveying machines into fighting monsters, much as the Scyre warriors transformed themselves into beasts with claws and feathers.
Siv managed to hit the first GAV in the approaching line, and it flew into the air, flipping several times before landing in a spectacular explosion. But before she could cheer, she felt the entire GAV around her rock from an enemy hit. Her hands slipped from the gun, and her head knocked against the plastic bubble, stunning her.
“Hold on.”
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