by Josh Hayes
“I have to say,” Tim said, after several minutes of flying. “I’m impressed. It took me almost a week to get that comfortable with the controls. Hell, Michael refuses to fly this one, doesn’t like how the counter-grav feels?”
“Is it that different from the base model?”
“I don’t think so,” Tim shrugged, “but I’ve spent more time in them than most. You feel comfortable enough to set her down?”
“Yeah,” John said, a little more confident than he felt. “I think so.”
Tim pointed to a bare spot on the deck ahead of them. “Why don’t you set us down over there.”
John nodded and guided the skiff over. Tim reached up and flipped the landing strut controls, the hydraulics whined again as the struts folded out and locked into place. A status light on the middle console indicated they were properly deployed.
John pulled back on the throttle, reducing power slightly and the skiff continued its decent. He brought them to a standstill and eased them down until the struts touched deck below. Pistons hissed as the skiff settled and the thrumming of the engines lessened.
John smiled. Nothing matched the thrill of flying. There was something almost hypnotic about being in the air, as if he belonged there. He’d always felt more at home in the air than on the ground. Something he’d tried to explain to his mother on several occasions when she pleaded with him to find something safer to do with his life; something not in the air.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought of his family so much. Back on the Lincoln, he could go weeks without talking to them and never bat an eye, but now, stuck on a whole other world, he missed them. It may have been the first time in his life that he had been legitimately homesick.
Tom’s voice brought him back. “Oh, shit.”
John glanced at Tim, who nodded through windscreen to the deck below. Twenty feet away Wendy stood, arms crossed, her icy gaze fixed pointedly on them. Tom and Carter stood on either side of her, Tom shaking his head and Carter making no effort to hide his amused smile.
John grunted. “Hmmm, well, it was a good life, I guess.”
“So says you,” Tim muttered from the side of his mouth. “You think she’d notice if we just took off again and never came back.”
“It might be worth it to try. That face is killing me.”
They stared back at the trio of on-lookers for another minute, before Tim sighed and unstrapped his harness. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
“Hey, maybe it’ll be a quick death,” John said, climbing out after him.
“Not likely.”
They hopped down out of the skiff and made their way around the engine chassis to where Wendy stood, waiting, arms still crossed.
Tim spoke first, “Look, Wendy . . . ”
“It’s my fault,” John interrupted, “I asked—”
“Stop.” She hadn’t even raised her voice, but as before, the authority in it was undeniable. “Not interested. We’ve got too much to do, and don’t have time. We’ll talk about his later. Right now, we need to start making final preparations to vacate this place.”
Wendy jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Is there enough fuel in Skiff Two to get us across Midtown?”
Tim seemed confused. “Uh, yeah plenty. Why?”
“We need to take a trip.”
FOURTEEN
In the end, it didn’t take half as long as she thought to get the information she needed, and what she learned scared her. Calsi had gone into the whole thing with an open mind, not knowing exactly what she was going to find. The dispatch hadn’t been specific. Even now, she almost didn’t believe, and never would have believed, had she not heard it from this idiot’s mouth.
Oak—a fitting name, she decided—sat, bound to a chair, in the back room of one of her safe houses. She’d finished working on him after only an hour and had spent the rest of the night trying to decide what to do with the information she’d pulled out of him. In the end, she decided she needed another opinion.
“So?” she asked, arms crossed.
“I don’t know, Cal,” Len Lorne answered, clearly not sold on the idea either. When he’d finally answered her call, it had taken almost twenty minutes to convince him that she hadn’t fully lost her mind. And when he’d heard it from the man, himself, Len simply stood shaking his head, dumbfounded.
He stood beside her, considering the bound man. After a few moments, rubbed his chin and said, “It just seems too good to be true, you know?”
“Graft, Len, I’ve been telling myself that all night, but it’s hard to argue the facts.” She motioned to Oak. “I mean, he doesn’t exactly seem like he’s smart enough to just make that stuff up. He’s kind of an idiot.”
Oak rocked his head slightly and moaned. His words were drawn out and slurred. “Noooo…diot…ki…ooo.”
“Yeah,” Len said.
“I’m telling you, it can’t all be coincidence. No way. Not with what the dispatch said. I mean, shit, Len, everyone is looking for him. Everyone. Do you still have your contact in the Guard?”
“Of course, I do. Do you think I’d be able to keep up my better-than-average fee schedule if I didn’t? It’s much easier to overcharge the government when you know someone in government. Why, what are you thinking?”
Calsi scoffed. “What do you think? I’m thinking about getting paid. Come on, we have to report this.”
She hesitated.
“Don’t we?”
Len signed and chewed on his lower lip, clearly conflicted.
Asking him for a favor like this was no small thing, Calsi knew. If they were wrong he’d probably lose all the influence he had in the Guard. One did not make it very long in the Regency by making mistakes.
After several long, silent moments, Len said, “I’ll send him a message and see what he wants us to do.”
Calsi breathed a heavy sigh as Len turned and stepped out of the room. She had gambled big even bringing him in on this, but if this all turned out to be what she thought, both of them would never have to worry about money again.
Oak moaned again, sounding like he was trying to say something else, but Calsi couldn’t make it out. She ignored him. He was a payday, nothing more. All she needed to do now was keep him alive long enough to turn him over to the Guard. After that, she knew what would happen to him. Though, if everything she had learned was true, she wondered how it would effect her current situation.
Not many people had the skills she possessed, both in information gathering and target elimination. Precision was her specialty, invisibility her lifestyle. There were not many things the Regency could not do. Subtlety, however, was not part of their repertoire. She could be a scalpel, where they could only ever be a battle-axe.
Most of her work so far had been surveillance jobs, keeping eyes on prominent businessmen or city government officials. But even those jobs were becoming more few and far between. She needed this, and she needed it to be right.
The door opened behind her and Len stepped into the darkened room. “Okay,” Len said, “We’re in.”
FIFTEEN
John squinted as the skiff rose into the early morning sunlight. The two moons of Neverland still clung to the sky on one end of the horizon. At the other, a warm yellow sun rose.
“Check it out.” Tim said, pointing to the pale blue, cloudless sky above.
A hazy band stretched across the sky from horizon to horizon. At first glance, it looked like one solid ring, but as John starred at it, he discovered it was actually millions of individual specks.
“That’s where all the dust comes from?” John asked, wondering just how big those specks were that he could see them at this distance.
Tim nodded. “Kind of funny isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“That we’re all fighting over some naturally occurring, overabundant rocks.”
“War’s have been fought for less,” John said, still trying to comprehend the size and scope of the ring.
It must have been several hundred miles across and God only knew how deep. The massive sight dwarfed everything else around them.
Tom pushed the throttle forward and they flew over the rooftops.
In the passenger compartment behind them, Wendy, Bella, Tom, and Carter were discussing evacuation plans. John barely heard them, instead focusing on the city around him.
Barreen stretched for miles in every direction, easily as big as any major metropolitan center on Earth. They reached the industrial complexes of Midtown in under five minutes. Grey smoke rose from exhaust vents and slender stacks in a perfect picture of heavy industrialization and automation. They flew past the refineries, warehouses, housing tenements, and processing plants. In the distance, the modern towers and spires of Bay Town were painted black against the sunrise.
They passed over several rivers, cutting their way back and forth through the city, to the unseen the bay beyond. Everything seemed focused around that particular area. It made sense, almost all large cities on Earth developed around stable water sources and spread out from there. Why should this place be any different?
As they continued across the cityscape, a large six-lane, divided highway came in view. Supported by massive pylons, it towered over the surrounding structures. A handful of vehicles traveled the road, weaving in and out of the abandoned wrecks that lay strewn across the surface.
“Impressive.” John said, indicating the highway.
“You should have seen it before the war,” Tim said, turning the skiff to follow the road’s winding path through the city. “Years ago, the Bay Route was the most traveled road in Barreen. Traffic was horrible. But it was the easiest way to get across town.”
“You mean everyone doesn’t fly around in aircars or skiffs?”
Tim laughed. “Are you kidding? The way some people drive, I’d be terrified if they flew. No, most people drive ground cars, but even those are becoming scarce.”
“Oh?” John asked.
“No one wants to be a target. If you haven’t noticed, Barreen isn’t exactly the safest place.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Tim nodded to the bridge. “Used to be mainly for commuting from Old Town to Bay Town. ‘Course that was back when people used to live in Old Town. Now-a-days, it’s used for supply shipments and whatnot coming in from the farms on the outskirts.”
“How long has it been?” John asked.
“What? Since people have actually lived in Old Town and it wasn’t just a bunch of junkies squatting?”
“Yeah.”
“Long time. Hell, Old Town has been dying a slow death since before the war. The big migration happened probably twenty years ago. Mid Town is where most people call home now, even though it doesn’t look it.”
“And Bay Town?”
Tim sniffed and lifted his chin.
“That bad huh?”
“It’s not that,” he paused, and looked up at the blue sky around them, seemingly searching for the right words. “It’s that they live in their own little bubble down there, like it’s a completely different world there than it is out here. Hell, I doubt they have any idea what goes on out here, beyond the safety and security of their precious Core. They don’t care that the Regency is slowly chipping away at everything that makes them human. The illusion of freedom and choice is all they really have.”
John nodded and turned his gaze back across the city. He had trouble coming to grips with the size of the city. More than that, he couldn’t believe the amount of space that went unused, simply abandoned and left to rot. The city expanded in front of them, the buildings growing taller and more elaborate as they neared the bay. He didn’t doubt the accuracy of Tim’s statement, remembering his own lack of knowledge about world events before joining the military.
After a several minutes of silent flying, John noticed an increase in traffic, both in the air and on the ground.
Below, John made out the forms of people, moving along the streets, living out their lives, seemingly obviously to the military patrols around them.
Tim pointed out two military patrol cutters off to their left, long, flat-topped barges with open decks, both cruising above wide streets and large clusters of apartments and warehouses. Uniformed soldiers stood watch at various points along the sides of the aircraft from the bow all the way to the stern, keeping constant vigil citizens below.
“Not very often you see two cutters in such a tight formation,” Carter said from the back. “Especially this far out from the Bay.”
“Most of them keep to the inner parts closer to the Core,” Tim explained. “Every now and then a patrol might venture out this far, but only when expressly ordered to.”
“They don’t patrol Old Town?” John asked, watching as a frigate, about three times larger than their skiff, lifted up from between two warehouses, hovered for a second, and then sped away.
Tim shook his head. “They have their hands full as it is. Besides, the only thing they have to worry about in Old Town is Dusters and scavengers, and the Snatchers usually take care of those.”
“Two more patrols to the right,” Bella said.
Tim glanced sidelong in the direction his sister indicated and said, “Bastards really are everywhere.”
John worked his jaw and stared at his hands. It was his fault all this was happening, even though he really didn’t have any idea what was actually going on. A pang of guilt came over him. It was irrational, he knew. There wasn’t anything he could do to change the situation, but knowing he caused it made him wish he could.
From the back, Wendy said, “How are we looking?”
Tim adjusted their flight path slightly and said, “Well, either they have no idea we’re here or they’re playing it cool and waiting to see where we end up. I haven’t been able to pick up any tracer bots or scans, so I’d say we’re in the clear. We should be at the clinic in,” he checked the console’s clock in front of him, “about five minutes.”
True to his word, a few minutes later Tim guided the skiff between two long, tan brick buildings. Both ran the length of a block and stood four stories. He eased the skiff down onto the concrete between them and the landing struts hissed under the skiff’s weight. Wendy and Tom pulled the doors wide, and were out before Tim had the turbines completely shut down.
Bella poked her head into the cockpit as John pulled his harness free. “You coming?”
“Do I have a choice?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Come on.”
John raised an eyebrow at her brother, who said, “I’ll keep the lights on for you.”
John climbed out after Bella and they followed Wendy and Tom to one of the buildings, down a short staircase, and through heavy metal door. A short, dimly lit hallway brought them to a set of double doors, which Bella held open so John could pass through. Her usual smile had been replaced by the first serious look John had seen on her face.
“What is this place?” John asked, his voice almost a whisper.
Bella held a finger to her lips and motioned for him to follow. They stepped into what he first thought was a large warehouse, then, as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he realized it wasn’t a warehouse at all. It was a hospital.
Several rows of beds filled the cavernous space, surrounded by small monitors and stands holding IV bags. Only a few lights hung above the beds. What light they shone was muted by opaque coverings. A solemn quietness hung in the air, like that of an ICU ward or funeral parlor.
Looking over the rows of beds, John did some quick math and figured there must have been around 200 people being cared for here. He only saw a hand full of nurses making their rounds, checking displays and charts, and was again surprised that the similarities between their two worlds.
Bella whispered, “It’s a Dust clinic. All these patients are in various stages of recovery.”
Quietly, John followed Bella farther in, stopping a few feet behind Wendy and Tom, who were already speaking with a woman sitting at a desk in
the front of the room. Flickers of light from the monitors in front of her reflected off her glasses.
“Didn’t expect to see you here,” the woman told Wendy. Her auburn hair, pulled back into a tight ponytail, seemed to pull the skin of her face tight as well. Dark circles under her eyes matched the tiredness the sunken eyes exuded.
Wendy stood, hands tucked into her jacket pockets, looking over the beds beyond. “How’s she doing?”
“She’s okay,” the nurse answered, though tone said otherwise. “She opened her eyes the other day when Sonya checked on her.”
“How’d they look?”
“The same.”
Wendy nodded silently for a minute, then said, “I won’t bother her too much.”
The nurse gave her a half-hearted smile. “You don’t ever bother her.”
Wendy and Tom stepped around the desk and started to make their way down the far right row. John moved to follow, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.
“Give her a minute,” Bella said softly.
“Who is it?”
“It’s her mother.”
Wendy and Tom stopped halfway down the row, slightly more than shadow themselves, and took up positions on either side of a bed near the wall.
“She hasn’t been here in months,” the nurse, said looking back over her shoulder. “It’s not like her to show up like this.”
“We’re leaving.” Bella said, adjusting one of her hair ties.
The nurse did not seem surprised by this, but raised her eyebrows when she noticed John. She eyed him for a moment, then gave him a flirting grin.
“Who’s the new edition?”
Bella sidestepped, mirroring the nurse’s grin as she introduced him. John, who, for the most part, interacted with women better than most, couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so uncomfortable. The nurse practically undressed him with her eyes; he almost moved his hands to cover himself.
He remembered something his friend, Mark Keen, had said once, while they enjoyed a particularly warm day on the beaches of Spain. Most of the afternoon had been spent emptying a cooler full of beer and watching the Spanish girls walk up and down the beach. Mark commented on the catcalls coming from some enlisted men, as a group of young ladies made their way across the warm sand. “An eye-raping like you’ve never seen,” he’d said. John had spit half of his beer all over himself.