by C. W Tickner
‘Send up the water,’ Harl said, ‘and we will help you find your people.’
The Aylen nodded, but Kane rounded on Harl.
‘I won’t fly the ship up,’ he said, crossing his arms. ‘We rescue Tess first, then send water up. They can last another three days up there, but Tess has two at most.’
Harl understood. He loved Troy, but not like Sonora or Elo. He couldn’t risk them.
‘No!’ Kane said, putting a hand up as Harl opened his mouth to speak. ‘I have followed you since Delta and you have led all of us to places we could never have imagined, but this-’ He looked up at the enormous creature above them. ‘-is different. Those in orbit can survive longer than Tess and Troy, maybe even longer than seven days. But Tess and Troy will be dead soon if we do nothing.’
‘He’s right,’ Damen said and Harl spun around as the bearded man placed a hand on his shoulder.
Dana nodded from behind Damen as sense flooded into Harl. The people on Orbital could survive for a few more days. They had to. Gorman would take care of Elo and Sonora, and Harl would not leave Troy again. He owed the man that much.
‘Let’s find them,’ Harl said, writing in the sand. ‘What’s the plan?’
Dana snatched her staff from Kane as he muttered a meek apology about being caught up in the moment.
The Aylen smiled down at them and began scrawling in the yellow sand as he lowered his other hand to the table. The voice droned from the speaker on the box.
‘Get on.’
Chapter 18
There is no communication to the ship. We are entering the atmosphere and are heading directly for what I can only describe as a giant grey buildings. I can only hope it is a ruin.
Taking a deep breath and controlling the fear roiling inside him, Harl climbed up on to the hand. His mind raced to memories of a similar hand crushing his parents as it hoisted them from his homeland. It made him shiver and sweat trickled down his back from the fear.
The hand had a rough texture and felt warm to the touch as he clawed at the grooves of hard skin to haul himself up between Vorock’s four fingers. He noticed a metallic band of jewellery on Vorock’s wrist, but almost lost his footing as the Aylen lifted his hand and walked from the room.
Harl looked back at the others and, wobbling unsteadily, tried to focus. Kane was waving from below, jumping up and down in fear at his plight, but Harl was resigned to his fate. The fear was seeping from him. It left a calm wonder in its place.
Vorock was looking down at him as he crossed the huge space. It would take a human a day to cover the distance, but Vorock whisked him through his home in moments.
They entered a room where boxes had been hung on the walls and a low-sided tank stood in one distant corner. It was bursting with forests and flowered meadows, but one side had been smashed in, scattering broken glass across the picturesque landscape.
It had to be a world tank like the one Harl had been brought up in, but there was no sign of any buildings inside, so where did the people live? The answer came as Vorock walked over to one of the black boxes on the wall that looked like a fat picture frame and pressed a button on the side. The front turned transparent, revealing dozens of rectangular rooms inside that were all linked by stairways and tunnels. It reminded him of a child’s bone beetle house. An Elderman’s son had brought one to school once. It allowed the keeper to view the beetles as they lived their lives inside the narrow case. This tank looked the same, except the rooms were full sized and littered with machinery and luxuries, like a child’s doll house.
Sections of the front panel had been shattered to gain entry and steal the people. Dry blood streaks on the jagged glass hammered home the image of them being cut against the broken shards as they were dragged out.
Vorock’s hand stretched out to bring Harl close to the tank, lining him up with a hole in the glass so that he could climb into one of the rooms. His feet cracked the glass underfoot, but he was grateful to be on solid ground.
He stepped back to the edge of the tank where the front glass had been broken away and looked down. The lush tank waited far below him as if inviting him to wander among the tall trees and beautiful lakes inside. He wanted somewhere that peaceful to live with Sonora and Elo, but it was yet another prison.
He sighed and turned his attention to the room behind him. The plastic chairs had been overturned and a polished steel table ran the length of the back wall, laden with wires and electronic parts. He walked around the table and ran his hands over the various gadgets spread there. Kane would have been in his element tinkering with everything, but Harl didn’t have a clue what he was looking at.
Harl stopped at the end of the table. It was the only clear space because the collections of wires, boxes, and equipment had been shoved roughly aside until there was enough space to house what, at first glance, looked like a full length triangular shield. But it was too thick. Rather than being thin and light like a shield would be, it was about a hand thick and was tapered towards the edges to give the impression of something like a fish, streamlined and sleek. That was where the resemblance ended though. A series of horizontal fans sat in recesses on either side. They were each covered by a grill of metal bars that reminded Harl of the fans used in Delta to cool the electronics. He tugged on one and found it could tilt on its axis. Something of Kane’s teaching must have rubbed off, because Harl realised that these fans forced air downwards. He had no idea why they were angled like that, or why they could tilt.
Two huge banging sounds thundered around him, rattling the room. Harl flung his hands up to shield his head as he hunkered down and waited for the worst. When nothing happened he peeked outside and discovered that Vorock had tapped on the side to gain his attention. Vorock had drawn his hand back once he’d realised how much he’d startled Harl and even managed to look vaguely apologetic.
Vorock raised his hand and pressed a catch on the bracelet Harl had spotted earlier on. The top of the bracelet flipped open to reveal myriad of huge buttons inside. He keyed something in and a fuzzy outline sprung into existence above the bracelet. It was a tiny transparent replica of the machine Harl had seen on the table and revolved in place above the bracelet for a complete turn before stopping.
Harl stared at the ghostly image of the machine as it split apart, each component and element detaching and separating out until all of the parts hovered over the Aylen’s wrist. It was a schematic. Harl’s eye’s widened as the Aylen pressed another button and the transparent parts reassembled.
Vorock pressed something on the bracelet and the triangular object on the table whirred into life. The six fans began to spin and the machine flew up off the table, spilling cables and delicate tools to the wreckage strewn floor. It hovered in mid-air, gently whirring.
Harl looked from the machine to the bracelet and it struck him that the flying machine was being controlled by the Aylen as it keyed buttons on the wrist device. Stepping back as it whizzed past, he watched it zoom out through the hole in the glass and lower itself to just below the opening, as if expecting him to step on to it.
Harl shuffled forward and looked down at the top of the floating machine. There were a pair of small depressions on top that were about the right size for his feet. Grooves covered the bottom as if for grip, but the thought of stepping onto the device was terrifying. How could it possibly support his weight without flipping over to send him hurtling towards his death on the floor below? Once again, he wished Kane was with him or even one of the others. Being alone with the Aylen made him uneasy. Was it really trying to help or was this all some kind of trick for its amusement? He looked up at the grey face and the Aylen nodded, gesturing with its hand for him to get on.
Harl didn’t move. Vorock smiled and nodded, as though he understood Harl’s doubts, but then he tapped a finger on the machine to push it down gently and stood back to watch Harl’s reaction. The machine whirred faster, countering the movement, then sprang back up to its original position and hovered in place, h
umming softly.
Harl swallowed as the fear of what he was about to do gagged at the back of his throat. He sat on the floor and lowered his legs over the outside edge of the tank. Pressing his feet into the depressions on its top, he was surprised at the feeling of resistance. The machine didn’t drop away below him like he’d expected; instead, the fans whirred faster to compensate for his weight and then held him firm as he lowered his entire weight onto the strange triangular device.
Letting go of solid ground was the hardest part, but in the end he had to. It was either that or give up entirely. He pulled his hands away and stood there on the machine as the fans hummed and he hovered almost two hundred metres above the ground.
He took a deep breath and steadied himself. Moving his feet was a risk, but as he shuffled them around he found that the machine compensated for his movements. Another shuffle and the world lurched to one side as he lost balance and tipped over. The machine levelled him out almost instantly and, with his heart beating in his chest, he tried to relax as the triangle slid through the air towards Vorock. The giant creature was engrossed in its bracelet and Harl realised that the Aylen was controlling the flying device with it.
The flyer stopped next to Vorock’s hand and Harl stepped off the machine, grateful to be back on the Aylen’s palm. Vorock twisted his wrist around next to the triangular flying machine and Harl watched as it folded in on itself and parked inside an opening on one of the bracelet’s links.
The thought of so much advanced technology left him feeling like Kane. He kept imagining the potential of the technology as the Aylen took him back to the room where the ship rested on the table.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, clambering down from Vorock’s hand.
Kane and Damen ran forward and Harl began to explain what he’d seen only to be interrupted by Dana as she threw her staff up into the air towards the Aylen.
Spinning, Harl saw the spear clatter against the flying machine as it swept out from the bracelet and began to unfold itself.
‘A drone?’ Kane said as the flying machine crashed to the tabletop and shattered.
‘Drone?’ Harl asked, confused.
Kane switched to his oracular tone of teaching as Vorock sifted through the wreckage with his fingertips.
‘A self propelled machine capable of flying or moving without a direct controller,’ Kane said seeing their confused looks. ‘Similar to the automatic guidance on the dropship, except controlled from a distance.’
Vorock tapped the bracelet, as though trying to get a response from the machine, then glared at Dana. He held his wrist out towards them and a second drone unfurled from a link. It zoomed around the room before settling at Dana’s feet where she clearly resisted the urge to kick it away.
‘Step on,’ Harl said. ‘It’s safe.’
She placed a tentative foot on the top then stepped up onto the platform, wobbling, but managing it much better than Harl had. As she leant forward, Harl noticed that the front of the drone tilted down, slightly, and began moving forward in that direction. She bent one leg and the machine pivoted mid-air so that she could look around at them, triumphant in her mastery, then sped off to scout the outer edge of the room. Her cloak rippled behind her as the sound of her whooping reached them.
While Harl had been investigating the Alpha’s homes, Damen had dragged out cases of food and water from the ship. He had managed to get a small stove lit and was heating up stew.
Vorock left the room, stopping to let Dana fly past, and returned with a human table in his hand, complete with cooking pots and eating implements balanced on top. In its other hand was a worktop cupboard with a round metal plate embedded in the top. Vorock eased the table down, followed by the worktop cupboard.
‘A heating element,’ Kane said, touching the metal plate. He pressed a button next to it and then flinched his hand back when the plate glowed red. ‘It’s hot, but how does it…’ He crouched and slid aside a door beneath the counter to reveal a single glowing sphere swirling with fantastic colours.
‘Charges,’ Harl said, repeating the word the Aylen had used.
Damen flicked off his stove and carried the pot to the worktop, then placed it on the circle of red hot metal.
‘They must use them to power almost everything,’ Kane said. ‘I wonder whether they’ve even heard of solar or fusion power?’
As they ate, Vorock outlined his plan for rescuing Troy, Tess and the Alphas from the farm.
‘How many Alphas are there?’ Harl asked.
Vorock raised the spear and scratched a series of runes in the sand. ‘Forty.’
The Aylen seemed to hunch over as he strode away towards the room where the Alphas had been kept.
Dana, having returned from her travels, gazed around the open space as if she could never get used to it, while Damen cast dark looks at Kane as they sat in moulded plastic chairs opposite each other. It was obvious that he hadn’t forgiven Kane for stunning him.
‘Do you think we can trust him?’ Harl asked.
Damen seemed glad of the distraction. ‘I don’t trust any Aylen, but I don’t see what choice we have.’
Kane nibbled on a slab of thick meat.
‘He could have killed us already or squished us into charges,’ he said and then glanced at Damen. ‘Let’s hope the power of converted humans doesn’t rely on their brain power.’
Damen twitched his foot and Kane flinched.
‘I think we’ll have to play along and see what happens,’ Harl said. ‘If we can survive long enough to rescue Troy and Tess, then we can escape with the water. So we play along until then.’ He took a sip of warm water from a canteen and was reminded again of the time left until Orbital ran dry. They would move first thing in the morning.
Vorock dropped the bag on the table, making them stumble as the shock-waves resonated through the metal and a gust of wind billowed out from where the bag had crashed down. Harl had to crouch to keep his balance and watched the huge rectangular bag settle into place.
The upper two thirds was made from a flexible shiny material and flopped over, obviously empty. Vorock had explained that he kept his day-to-day things in there, nothing special. Underneath, however, the material had been treated to form a thin, solid strip about four times the height of a man, with a sliding door in the centre. The front had small portholes glued either side of the glass door in the centre. The whole bag look worn and battered as though it had seen a lot of use. From the crude stitching, Harl judged that the bag was clearly not mass made.
Damen opened the door and they peered inside. A corridor split into a dozen rooms made from the same shiny material as the bag. Kane ran his fingers over one wall while Damen drew his short sword and attempted – unsuccessfully – to pierce the fabric.
‘The outer layer is the same material as the bag above but hardened to form a shell,’ Kane said.
They all jumped as the Aylen’s fingers burrowed into the entrance and dropped a small charge on the floor. Vorock’s fingers swept back out only to be replaced by one of his eyes as he peered inside. Kane smiled and picked up the sphere. It wobbled as he held it with both hands like a huge water jug.
Dana’s voice came from a room deeper inside.
‘In here,’ she said.
Kane struggled with the sphere’s weight as they followed her voice into the dark interior. She was in one of the other rooms and pointed to a small metal box glued on the outer wall when they found her.
‘Looks like your bauble goes in here,’ she said.
Kane refused Damen’s help to lift the charge up into the box and was puffing and blowing once he managed to slot the charge in place. Lights flickered into life inside the room from small beads sown into the material. Many of the interior walls were only made from thin sheets of the reinforced material and had schematics drawn all over them. Electronic components were scattered everywhere and a jumble of furniture had rolled into one corner of the largest compartment.
‘Fascinating,’ Kane
said again as he jabbed a finger into a hole on the floor. More holes punctured the floor in a regular pattern across the hole room. ‘The table legs can be placed in these holes and the table moved around the room for convenience.’
Dana had picked up a wrist band from a table. It was similar to the one Vorock wore when he controlled the drones, but on a tiny scale. She clipped it around her forearm.
Kane noticed her tapping the blank screen on the device and he shuffled closer to get better view. When he opened his mouth to speak she shot him a dark look, so he shut it again as she pressed a row of buttons on the side. Nothing seemed to happen, so she shook it vigorously.
Kane sighed and turned away.
Dana looked like she wanted to ask him something, but instead she returned to shaking the device.
Vorock was kneeling at the edge of the table watching them through the open door. He placed the translation box in front of the bag and began jotting symbols in the sand with the pointer as they explored the rooms.
‘The bracelet can be used to control the flyer,’ he said.
Dana had got the screen working and was tapping away at the display.
‘I made this bag to transport my humans,’ Vorock said. ‘If you place the stores you need from your ship inside, I will take you to the nearest Harvest Ten farm. I am unsure about getting past security, but we must try.’ His hand hovered above the sand then scrawled, ‘I need them back.’
Harl walked outside and wrote a reply while Kane and Dana began transferring supplies from the ship to the bag. ‘We are running out of time. Our people will run out of water if we do not leave today.’
Vorock nodded.
‘He doesn’t care,’ Damen said, looking up at the giant face then back at Harl. ‘I don’t trust him.’
‘We haven’t any choice,’ Harl said, thankful Vorock didn’t understand their speech. ‘If things go badly you might get another chance to commit suicide by attempting to kill another Aylen.’