Forsaken Skies

by D. Nolan Clark

  Their destination lay clockwise around the cylinder, about sixty degrees up the wall. Valk tapped a control pad on the arm of his seat and the blimp obligingly swiveled on its axis until their feet dangled over the roof of the restaurant. The airship vented gas and sank through a haze of advertising drones, startling a couple of bats that had been roosting underneath the machines. Lanoe tracked them with his eyes, and Valk wondered if he was working out firing solutions on them.

  “Maybe I should talk to them alone,” Lanoe said as they stepped down onto the roof. A spiral staircase brought them back down into real gravity.

  “Not a chance,” Valk told him.

  They headed down onto the restaurant’s platform. Valk’s suit chimed and a blue pearl in the corner of his eye told him the stowaways were moving, heading out of the restaurant. They hurried down the stairs and Valk caught sight of them right away. They stood out from the crowd because their clothes were so drab and modest, compared to everyone else. When he called out to them they turned to look but then the elder’s eyes narrowed. Valk knew this wasn’t going to be a friendly reunion.

  “Have you come to arrest us, finally?” the old woman asked.

  “No, no! Nothing like that,” Valk said. “Elder McRae, I wanted to introduce you to my friend here, Commander Lanoe.”

  “I was one of the idiots who nearly hit your freighter,” Lanoe explained. “I wanted to apologize for that, and maybe talk to you about something else.”

  “No one was harmed, M. Lanoe. There’s no need for apologies,” the elder replied.

  “That’s very kind of you,” Lanoe said. “It could have gone badly.”

  “One should never grow attached to might-have-beens. Now, will you excuse us? I’m afraid we don’t have much time. We need to head back to Niraya as soon as possible.”

  “Hopefully not the same way you came,” Lanoe said. He turned to look at the girl. “Aleister Lanoe,” he said.

  “Roan,” she replied, and shook his hand.

  “Just Roan?”

  The girl smiled. “I gave up my family name when I became an aspirant,” she replied.

  Valk looked from Lanoe to the girl to the elder. He was starting to lose his patience with all this.

  “I’d like to suggest a better way for you to get home,” Lanoe said.

  “Oh?” the elder asked.

  “Will you forgive a little plain speaking? If you couldn’t afford seats on a liner while coming here, I doubt you can afford them for the return journey. As I put your lives in danger, I’d like to pay off my debt to you by chartering a small starship and flying you home myself.”

  “That’s really too generous,” the elder said.

  “It would let me work off some karma,” Lanoe said, with a knowing smile. “It would also give us a chance to talk further.”

  “I’m not sure what we would have to speak about,” the elder said, glancing over at Roan.

  Too damn much, Valk thought. Clearly all of them were playing games and he wasn’t going to get to see any of their cards. And when exactly did Lanoe become so eloquent? He’d barely said a handful of words to Valk since they’d met.

  “Please,” Lanoe said. “It would mean a great deal to me.”

  “In our faith humility precludes accepting lavish gifts,” the elder pointed out.

  “I assure you,” Lanoe began, “as an officer of the Navy, my honor would be stained if I allowed you to be harmed on your return journey.”

  “Just stop this already,” Valk said, softly.

  “I suppose,” the elder said, “if your honor is at stake, then—”

  “Stop!” Valk said, almost shouting.

  It worked.

  They all turned and looked at him. Valk had never much cared for being stared at, but right then he was furious. “None of you are going anywhere until I have some answers. I’m going to lose my job if I don’t get to the bottom of this. You,” he said, looking at Lanoe, “need to tell me what happened to that yacht. And you, Elder, need to tell me why you came to the Hexus in the first place.”

  “We had business here, as I told you before,” Elder McRae replied.

  Valk shook his head from side to side. “Not good enough. Who were you meeting with? What kind of business? Answer me now or I will detain you, legal niceties or no.”

  The old woman looked taken aback. She raised one hand to her throat. But at least she kind of answered his question. “We were asked to keep our business discreet. I suppose, however, that you can simply consult some drone camera or other if you want to know who we dined with this evening. It was a man named Auster Maggs. His identity can hardly be considered a secret, considering his position.”

  Valk had never heard of him. He glanced over at Lanoe but didn’t see any recognition in the old man’s face. “What position is that?”

  “He’s the Sector Warden for all the planets served by the Hexus, including Niraya. I thought you would know such an important person, M. Valk.”

  Valk looked over at Lanoe, who was looking back at him. The expression on Lanoe’s face spoke volumes.

  “Are you sure that’s who you met with?” Lanoe asked. “Your Sector Warden?”

  “We had vital business with him. He was very kind to meet us at all.”

  Valk pinged the computers in traffic control with a simple query. Then he took a minder from a pocket in his suit and unrolled it. Displayed on its front was an image of a Naval officer, one Lieutenant Auster Maggs. Short black hair, dashing good looks, knowing sneer. “This was the man?”

  It was clearly so from the elder’s expression.

  “Elder,” Lanoe said, “I’m sorry. But I think you’re mistaken as to this man’s identity. Your Sector Warden—none of the Sector Wardens—ever leave Earth. They’re considered too important to risk letting them travel about.”

  The calm look on the elder’s face rippled, as the surface of a pond might when struck by a very large rock. Valk could see her attempting to regain control.

  Roan, on the other hand, looked as if her jaw might actually drop off her skull.

  “The money!” she said.

  Chapter Five

  Maggs forced himself not to reach into his pocket and touch the development chits again. They were real and they weren’t going anywhere. They were the solution to a very thorny problem and the promise of moving forward.

  He would still have to deal with the fact that he had deserted his post. The Navy would have something to say about that. And there were plenty of other difficulties on the road forward. At least there was a road forward.

  He walked as casually as he could manage over to the nearest train station and up to the platform. A civilian pilot in a paper jumpsuit leaned against the railing, looking down the tracks. He turned to give Maggs the once-over and a little trickle of fear like cold water went down Maggs’s spine, but he put a bored expression on his face and the pilot looked away again. When the train came, Maggs stepped aboard, avoiding the car reserved for Naval personnel. No need to run into some old chum now, someone who might remember seeing him here.

  He had to get off the Hexus now, and sharpish. At the docks he would buy passage on the next liner out, headed anywhere. Of course he couldn’t say as much to the ticket vendors. He took out his minder—jostling the chits in the process, good, they were still there—and looked up the departure schedule. It looked like a second-class cabin was available on a ship headed to Rarohenga. The gravity there was a bit heavy to his taste but it would do. The place was at least civilized enough that he could cash in the chits at a properly discreet bank.

  The train pulled out of the station and he grabbed a hanging strap. Movement caught his eye and he turned to look. The various compartments of the train were separated by sliding glass doors. He could see into the Navy car from where he stood. It looked like a marine had tackled a Navy enlisted to the floor of the car and was beating him bloody with gloved fists. Other marines stood over the two of them, cheering and taking bets. All good
fun, Maggs supposed, for the kind of psychopath who would make a career of fighting ground battles. As an officer he ought to intervene, he supposed, but that would be foolish.

  “Savages.”

  Maggs glanced over and saw a civilian with full body tattoos and not much in the way of clothing sitting by the door. The woman had been reading her minder but now she stared at the fistfight with unveiled antipathy.

  She looked up at Maggs, her mouth twisted in disgust. “Can’t turn it off, can you? Teach a man to fight and that’s all he ever does.”

  A witty retort leapt to mind, but Maggs was quite aware he was in the wrong car. The straphangers around him were all civilians. He was not, in other words, among friends. A gentler reply was in order, perhaps. Downgrade your mix, Maggsy, he thought. Don’t run so rich. His father’s voice, again. Dear old Dad had always been fond of pilot’s argot, despite the fact he hadn’t flown himself anywhere for thirty years before Maggs was born.

  “The war with DaoLink will be over soon,” Maggs said. “Then we’ll be out of your hair.”

  The woman snorted angrily. It looked like she was about to spit on his boot. He would be forced to respond in the interest of honor if she did.

  So he was somewhat glad when a sudden crunch drew their collective attention back to the connecting door. Someone had picked up the marine pugilist and thrown him against the wall of the train, hard enough that the entire Navy car shook. Other marines jumped to attention, their boots thundering on the floor.

  The intercessor was a very tall fellow in a heavy suit with the helmet up and polarized. He bent over the enlisted on the floor, checking the poor beggar’s pulse.

  Behind him stood another Naval officer, also in a heavy suit. This one had his helmet down, revealing a face old and craggy—enough so it made Maggs think of the old woman he’d just fleeced.

  The old man looked right at Maggs, through the door. His eyes narrowed.

  Slowly he bent and touched the shoulder of the giant. Getting his attention. Then they were both looking at Maggs. Staring at him.

  They’d been so damned close. They could have cut Maggs off at the next station, flanked him and had him pinned. Then the stupid marine had to go and start a fight in the middle of a crowded train car.

  And of course Valk had to intervene.

  It could have gone very badly—well, worse than it did. Valk might be strong enough to throw one marine around like a toy, but his buddies would have made short work of the traffic controller, and Lanoe, too. Luckily one of them had been smart enough to ping Lanoe’s cryptab and notice his rank. That made them all stand aside—and in the process, Maggs caught sight of them.

  The pretty little bastard clearly knew he was being followed. Through the connecting door Lanoe saw him turn and run for it, jumping over the feet of civilian passengers, shoving straphangers out of his way.

  “He’s moving,” Lanoe said, slapping the release button for the connecting door. “You stay here—I’ll get him.”

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Valk insisted.

  Lanoe didn’t waste breath on a reply. He hurried into the next car, pushing his way through the passengers. Some idiot tried to stop him with an outstretched arm—“Stay in your own damned car,” she said—but Lanoe just twisted under the arm and bulled his way through. Up ahead he saw the connecting door to the next car was open. Well, there was only one direction for Maggs to run.

  And only one more car in front of this one.

  Lanoe hurried through. Thankfully the front car wasn’t crowded. He jumped over a drunk who lay sprawled half in and half out of a seat, then grabbed a pole as the train banked around a tight curve in the tracks.

  Up ahead he saw the door at the front of the train slide open. Grimy air burst into the train and made Lanoe’s eyes water. He blinked to clear them and saw Maggs standing in the door frame, his boots right on the edge. The idiot must not have realized he was out of places to run.

  “Just stand down,” Lanoe called.

  Valk came up behind him. Together they moved forward, slowly. The swindler lieutenant was cornered and Lanoe knew how dangerous that could make a man. He raised his hands to show he wasn’t armed. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he said.

  Maggs laughed. “You might try,” he said.

  Sheer bravado. Lanoe had seen what Valk did to that marine—Maggs was about half of the traffic controller’s size. If they wanted to make this nasty, the fool wasn’t going to come out of it as pretty as he went in.

  Lucky for him Lanoe didn’t want that. “You’ve got nowhere to go,” he said.

  Maggs glanced around him, as if some incredible opportunity were about to present itself. Then—

  He was just gone.

  The doorway was empty. It was as if the swindler had just vanished.

  Lanoe rushed forward to the door, thinking perhaps Maggs was just hanging on to the exterior of the train. But there was no sign of him.

  Maggs held his breath—unnecessarily. His helmet flowed up around his face even before his boots touched the water, not so much as a drop getting inside. He just had time to hear someone scream before he plunged into the swimming pool.

  When he’d seen it coming up, a hexagonal patch of water just a few meters down from the elevated train tracks, he’d almost laughed aloud. He’d supposed it might be dangerous, jumping from a moving train, but years out in the void had given him a certain flair for spatial relations. He’d leapt with excellent form, even avoiding a cluster of bathers at the far end of the pool.

  Of course, luck was never an uncomplicated proposition. In the short interval of time between when he struck the water and when he struck the bottom, he just about had the neural capacity to realize he’d jumped into the shallow end.

  His left foot struck the concrete bottom first. The rest of his weight came down on it in an ungainly fashion and he had the nauseating sensation of his bones bending in a manner for which they were not designed.

  There was a crackling sound and then a bolt of white lightning shot up his leg and into his spine. His whole body convulsed and the air inside his helmet was filled with the kind of obscenities that should never be spoken in public.

  The thinsuit he wore did not have room for all the medical technology a heavier suit might bring to bear. It did its best, his boot instantly inflating to cushion and restrain the twisted bones. The suit could do nothing about the growing pain.

  Maggs sank to the bottom until he lay on his back, staring up through the blue water. A fellow in trunks and goggles stroked by overhead, silver bubbles leaking from the corners of his mouth. He started to swim down toward Maggs, perhaps intending to offer a helping hand. Maggs waved him away.

  He just needed to catch his breath. He just needed—

  The chits. Damnation, if they’d been dislodged from his pocket in the fall…but no, there they were. The water would do them no harm.

  He had to get away. He had to get off the Hexus before his pursuers caught up with him. A twisted leg would slow him down, but stopping now for any reason—seeking medical attention, for instance—was out of the question.

  Once he thought he could move without vomiting inside his helmet, Maggs turned himself over on his stomach and crawled to the steps that led out of the pool, mostly using his hands for propulsion. He hauled himself up and out, water streaming from his thinsuit in sheets. His helmet came down automatically.

  Now came the critical trial. He stepped up onto the lip of the pool, first with his good leg, then with his bad. He could just about walk on it, if he didn’t mind a little brain-melting agony.

  All around the pool bathers looked up at him, some murmuring in surprise or even concern. He made a point of avoiding eye contact as he limped out of the pool area and into an adjoining hostelry.

  It turned out to be a low sort of place. There was no concierge, nor even anyone at the front desk. Booking rooms or obtaining other services was accomplished by way of a kiosk set into one wall. Mag
gs dismissed a prompt asking him if he wished to inquire about hourly rates. Paging through the available options he finally found one that would allow him to summon transportation.

  He chose the quickest option, a drone pedicab. Then he went and stood by the doorway, just inside its shadow, where he could watch the street. If he could just stay free until the pedicab arrived, he thought, he would still have a chance.

  When the train pulled into its next stop, Lanoe jumped out with Valk right behind him. He stared around the platform as if Maggs would just reappear as easily as he’d vanished, perhaps with a taunting wave before he jumped on the back of a passing elephant or something even more impossible.

  “If we split up, we can cover more ground,” Lanoe pointed out.

  Valk laughed. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  Lanoe shook his head. He might say the same to the damned traffic controller. “Right now, the only thing I care about is catching this guy,” he said.

  “Okay,” Valk replied. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  Valk leaned forward, his hands on his knees. It was a passable impersonation of a man trying to catch his breath. “You set off after this bastard almost before I had his location. What are you trying to prove?”

  “He stole the Nirayans’ money,” Lanoe answered. “If we catch him in time we can get it back.”

  “That simple, huh? Seemed like you wanted something from them. You could have stayed behind while I ran off in hot pursuit, talked to them where I couldn’t hear.”

  Lanoe supposed that was true. The Nirayans had information that might be useful to him. He hadn’t stopped to think about that, though. He supposed he’d thought they would be more forthcoming if he’d done them a good turn.

  Maybe.

  “Sometimes I outsmart even myself,” he said. “What about you, then? You’re a traffic controller. Not a policeman, even if you act like one. Why not just let the local constabulary take over?”