Daughters of Forgotten Light

by Sean Grigsby

  “What kind of trouble did you bring here?” Renee crouched, leaning against the wall.

  Dolfuse put a finger to the older woman’s lips.

  Dust and pieces of gravel racked the shed. Dolfuse had to squeeze her eyes to shut out more of the stinging dirt. When Sweet Kiss’s engines faded and the wind died down, a voice shouted as a thudding of footsteps ran across the yard, into the house. Glass shattered and objects fell to the ground. Dolfuse saw only shadows.

  “They’re destroying my house!” Renee whispered.

  Dolfuse put her hand over Renee’s mouth, staring right into the woman’s eyes, hoping she got the damn message – that if she didn’t keep her mouth shut, they’d find them and kill them as sure as Europe was a popsicle.

  The soldiers rushed out of the house.

  One of them shouted, “Check over there.”

  They were coming toward the shed. Dolfuse’s stomach twisted into frozen knots as she clawed at the door, searching for a way to lock it.

  “It only locks from the outside.” Renee slumped to the ground, making no attempt to keep her voice down.

  The door swung open, allowing blinding light into the shed. Dolfuse held up a hand to keep it off her face.

  “Get them out of there,” one of them said.

  This is it, Dolfuse thought. This is my punishment for everything I’ve done.

  They put her on her knees, outside on the gravel.

  Renee grunted as she fell beside the senator. “Lena?”

  Dolfuse squinted against the light. A group of women and girls stood in front of them, some wearing strange leather jackets and aiming hunks of metal from their forearms.

  Oh, shit.

  “My Lena!” Renee rose to her feet. “You’re back.”

  One with blue hair shoved Renee to the ground.

  “I’ve got this.” Lena, Dolfuse recognized, stepped to the front, bending over her mother. “Don’t talk to me like I’ve been on vacation.”

  The others stood silent.

  Renee cried, lifting her hands toward Lena. “I’m so sorry for what I did.”

  “Where’s my daughter?” Dolfuse searched their arms for her baby, but none of them held her. “My baby?”

  “I don’t know who you are,” a big woman said, “but I’d shut the hell up.”

  “You can come live with me again.” Renee wasn’t going to let up. She seriously thought Lena would forgive her.

  Lena crossed her arms. “What did you always say about how Adam had to toil in the fields? That it was his labor, his duty. And Eve suffered in childbirth? How that was her field?”

  Renee had nothing to say to that. The tears came steadily and her hands shook as she cupped them and brought them to her mouth, as if praying.

  Say one for me too, Dolfuse thought.

  “Well, Mom,” Lena raised her fist in line with her mother, “you planted me in Oubliette, and I’ve returned to give you the fruits of your labor.”

  Dolfuse flinched. She’d seen what came from the guns strapped to these women’s arms. But Lena hesitated, her arm shaking as she bit her lip, wrenched her face. She screamed and stomped before firing her weapon toward the Horowitz house. The blazing ball of blue light flew through the second story window, through the roof, and then continued on toward the stars until it vanished from sight. Dropping her right arm, Lena used the other to punch Renee square in her temple. The older woman flopped to the ground and didn’t move.

  “Where the fuck did your rang go?” a pigtailed blonde asked.

  Lena spit. “Give me one of the extras. Taylor, why didn’t my rang bounce back?”

  “Oubliette glass,” an older woman said. “It’s a hell of a thing. Here on Earth, consider yourselves armed with only one shot. Well, except for Pao.”

  “Please don’t kill me.” Dolfuse covered her head, looking away from the psychotic women, but her sight found the unconscious but breathing lump of Renee Horowitz. Dolfuse looked back to her captors, determining she couldn’t stop whatever they were about to do.

  An Asian woman with blue hair pushed from behind the group. She held a baby girl in her arms.

  Dolfuse pointed. “That’s my baby.”

  Lena turned to look at Dolfuse’s daughter, and then back to her. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Senator Linda Dolfuse. I can help you. I saw you, on a drone feed. You’re Lena Horowitz.”

  Lena immediately aimed her newly strapped gun at Dolfuse. The others raised their arms in sync.

  “Please.” Dolfuse fought to keep her voice from shaking, but it was beyond her control.

  Lena stepped closer, sneering. “You sent that airship to wipe us out.”

  “No.” Dolfuse shook her head. “I didn’t know anything about that until they were already launching the thing. I tried to stop them. The vice president was behind every step of it. She used me like a pawn.”

  “She’s full of shit, Lena,” said another woman with Down syndrome and peanut-colored hair.

  “That’s my daughter she’s holding over there.” Dolfuse nodded toward the blonde. “Why would I want her to die? I didn’t send the attack ship.”

  Lena scrunched her brow. “How can I trust anyone who’d ship their daughter? A baby, especially. Someone like that must be one cold bitch.”

  “I didn’t.” Dolfuse snapped. “It was the vice president. I thought the baby was being adopted. Martin had her shipped to punish me.”

  Lena scoffed. Squatting down, she signaled for Dolfuse to come closer.

  Dolfuse hesitated, thoughts of getting pummeled in the face flashing across her mind. But after a moment, she leaned in.

  “I’m going to let you in on a little secret.” Lena put her mouth to Dolfuse’s ear. “You have to own your mistakes. See, on Oubliette we get that. We make a bad call, we have to claim it.” She turned to the others with spread arms. “Ain’t that right, ladies?”

  They nodded and hooted agreement.

  “I can help you,” Dolfuse said.

  Lena smiled. “You will. But you won’t get your baby back, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just be glad I don’t feel like killing you.”

  Dolfuse nodded, her headache returning with a vengeance.

  “For now,” Lena added.

  Dolfuse swallowed and looked around at the others, who laughed like it was a party.

  Lena pointed to the house. “Let’s grab some food from inside. See if there’s any milk for Rory, too.”

  Rory, Dolfuse thought. My baby’s name is Rory.

  “Grab and go,” Lena shouted to the women as they ran for the house. “We need to get to the shipper port before they figure out we brought back their airship.” She turned to Dolfuse. “And you’re going to help us.”

  Chapter 54

  As they flew toward Washington Sarah kept her eyes on the senator, or the black woman who claimed to be a senator. Lena had been too quick to believe the woman, but at least they had their rangs trained on her and that was a tough thing to do in the cramped space of the airship.

  Dolfuse stared at Rory as the baby drank some of the powdered milk they’d found in the cupboard. “They were controlling this ship with an ansible program,” the senator said. “They might be able to take over again, see what you’re doing.”

  “Not without this they won’t.” Ava threw back a chunk of wires and circuits that rolled to the tip of Dolfuse’s shoe.

  The senator shrugged, satisfied.

  “What’s the best way in?” Lena continued feeding Rory, eyeing Dolfuse like a murder suspect. “The most covert.”

  “Honestly?” Dolfuse said. “Probably returning to the launch room. I reason, if you go in that way, they’ll think the airship returned back to where they launched it, autonomously.”

  “What’s with you and your big words?” Hurley Girly asked.

  Sarah laughed. “She means, if we don’t go blowing shit up on our way in they’ll think it flew back by itself.”

  “Could work,” Dipity said.<
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  Lena shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s the best shot you have.” Dolfuse rubbed her face like she was trying to wake herself from a bad dream. “Land anywhere else, or, as the blue-haired one said–”

  “My name is Sarah.”

  Dolfuse smiled curtly. “If you go in guns blazing, they’ll blow us from the sky before you can do… whatever it is you’re planning on doing.”

  “That settles that, then.” Lena leaned toward Ava in the cockpit. “You remember where the launch room is?”

  “Unfortunately,” Ava said.

  A few minutes farther and the shipper port gleamed like a fallen star on the horizon. Spotlights surrounded it, the beams weaving throughout the sky.

  “What’s with all the lights?” Ava said. “I never remember it looking like a Hollywood premiere.”

  Lena kissed Rory’s head as the baby blinked sleepily. “They have their guard up. Get us some altitude and come in from above. We don’t want anyone with an itchy trigger finger to get spooked.”

  Ava took them higher, but stayed under cloud cover.

  The sudden shift sent Sarah’s stomach into a whirl, so she focused on the spotlights outside to settle her stomach. Blocky shapes sat in front of the shipper port, but it wasn’t until they’d flown another few miles that Sarah realized what they were. “Tanks.”

  Hurley Girly clicked her tongue. “This just keeps getting better and better.”

  “Care to shed any light on this?” Lena asked Dolfuse.

  The senator shook her head. “They probably kept the tanks and soldiers here after they stormed the place.”

  “So you were here for that?” Lena raised an eyebrow.

  Dolfuse swallowed. “Yes. But I left as soon as I was able.”

  “What happened?” Dipity glared at Dolfuse. “Couldn’t stomach a mass genocide?”

  “Warden Beckles had me thrown into the shippee population. Just like you.”

  Everyone stared at the senator.

  Dolfuse sniffed and looked away. “I don’t care if you hate me. I deserve it. But I’ve been paying for my sins since they scrubbed me down and shoved me into a white uniform last week. And I made a promise to a girl inside that port. If you can help me keep that promise, then we’ll get along just fine. I’ll do whatever I have to.” She stole a glance at Rory before dropping her eyes to the floor.

  Sarah still didn’t trust her, but she could tell the senator wasn’t lying.

  “And before you say it,” Dolfuse added, “I know I still haven’t been through the same things you have. I couldn’t stand a couple days eating that terrible manna gunk. I’d kill myself if I had to eat it for years on end.”

  “You can get used to just about anything,” Taylor said. She’d been silent until then, looking around, studying everything as if she were seeing it for the first time.

  As they approached the shipping port, steadily coasting lower toward the hole leading to the launch room, the black tanks followed the airship with their long barrels while the spotlights continued their pacing. It reminded Sarah of an old movie about air raids in a war a long time ago.

  “I can’t believe they’re not firing.” Sarah stared down the dark hole of a tank gun.

  “They underestimate you,” Dolfuse said. “Arrogance. They couldn’t imagine any of you could fly this ship back here. To them, you’re just shippees, and dead on Oubliette.”

  Lena passed Rory to one of the dwellers. “You keep saying ‘them’ like you had nothing to do with it. Even after spending a little time in the shipping port, you said it yourself. You’re Senator Dolfuse.”

  “I’m not a part of anything.” Dolfuse swallowed. “Not anymore. And you can call me Linda if it makes things kosher.”

  Lena laughed, obviously relishing the senator’s pain. “Well, I sure as shit hope you can go along with us. At least enough not to fuck things up.”

  Dolfuse nodded.

  Ava lowered the airship into the launch hole and everything went dark. Not even a fragment of the spotlights followed them. The ship’s engine hum intensified as the sound bounced off the long cylinder. Sarah tried to look out and catch any light, but only darkness looked back, and the glow of the airship controls remained the only comfort. She should have been used to it by then – the dark. But old fears died hard.

  “I don’t know where the hell I’m going,” Ava whispered. “I’m just going straight down until I hit bottom.”

  “Well go slow, then,” Dipity snapped.

  “You’re doing fine,” Lena said.

  They descended into a large, bright room with a glass pane set in the wall straight ahead where people in two-piece suits and street clothes stared at them. Below, soldiers rushed in from a large doorway, gawking with their heads tilted back, rifles at the ready.

  It had only been a few months since Sarah had been in this place, but at the same time it could have been a million years that she’d been on Oubliette. All the better, because this was not a homecoming. This was an invasion. And damn it felt good.

  “They can’t see us in here, can they?” Lena cradled her rang arm.

  “No,” Ava said. “This windshield is tinted.”

  The airship touched the floor and settled. The people on the other side of the glass stared from the control room just a few feet above.

  “Who are those people?” Lena slapped Dolfuse with the back of her fingers to get the senator’s attention.

  Dolfuse pointed. “I don’t know about the others, but that man there, Eric Lundgate, he programmed this attack ship when they sent it to Oubliette.”

  The man wore an ugly hat and a look of concerned confusion. This was going to be fun.

  “Groovy,” Lena said.

  “What are we going to do about the soldiers?” Hurley Girly played with one of her pigtails.

  Lena smiled. “Ava, when I tell you, blast every last one of these motherfuckers with everything we have. Don’t forget those idiots in the control room.”

  Dolfuse cowered into a heap, hands over her face, mumbling to herself. Sarah shook her head. Some people couldn’t take the heat.

  “On my count,” Lena said. “Three…”

  Sarah leaned in behind Lena to get a good view of the show.

  “…Two…”

  Ava caressed the controls.

  “…One. Shoot!”

  The entire airship vibrated from the concussive force of the lasers and cannons. Ava fired everything at the soldiers directly in front of them before shifting to fire into the control room window. Everything outside the airship turned into a blinding expanse of multicolored light. The only gap in the inferno came when Ava turned the ship in order to aim at the soldiers behind and below, who’d begun to fire in return. Their shots hit, but did nothing to the airship’s exterior.

  “OK, ease up.” Lena gripped Ava’s shoulder.

  The airship lowered and cooled, the declining whine of the guns giving way to the release of held breaths within the cabin.

  “Sheilas,” Lena said, “our lives depend on what we do here in a few minutes. We need these shippees, and we need the manna equipment. Don’t let me down.”

  They all nodded.

  “Open the hatch,” Lena said.

  Ava hit a button and nodded to Sarah. “Watch yourselves out there. I don’t know if I got them all.”

  “I need you to stay here.” Lena put a hand to Ava’s shoulder.

  “Like hell. I’m not going to miss out on any of the fun.”

  “Relax. You just killed more of them alone than we might see altogether. Besides, you’re the only one who can fly this thing. If shit goes down, I want to know we have a chance to get out of here.”

  Ava turned around in her seat, keeping her eyes forward. She clearly wasn’t happy about staying, but she wouldn’t go against Lena.

  The rear hatch finished lowering with a metallic wham against the floor.

  “Senator Dolfuse,” Lena said. “Stay here with the others.�
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  “Gladly.” Dolfuse folded her arms.

  Lena grinned. “Don’t get too comfortable. I still have use for you.”

  Sarah followed Lena to the edge of the ramp, scanning the immediate area with her eyes and the end of her new rang. The heat inside the gun burned a little each time she waved it one way or the other in search of soldiers, but she could tolerate it.

  With a hand signal, Lena told them the area was clear. The Daughters moved out. Soldiers lay in pools of blood. Burned chunks of flesh were scattered over the floor. A piece of glass fell from the control room and shattered. When Sarah ran toward where it had dropped, a burned corpse fell from the room.

  “Looks like we cleaned up nicely.” Hurley Girly whistled in appreciation of the carnage.

  “Let’s get the cyclones out,” Lena said.

  Dipity scratched her head. “You sure it wouldn’t be better to go on foot.”

  “We need to be fast,” Lena said. “And I trust those wheels more than my own two legs.”

  Chapter 55

  While the rest of the Daughters were killing soldiers and freeing shippees, Lena’s second-in-command had taken the airship on a joyride to rid them of the tanks outside. Outside, Lena kicked the side of one tank, now a burned-out shell that looked like a smashed marshmallow after sitting in the fire too long. The other tanks looked the same. Some of the newly freed shippees stood on top of the metallic corpses. One swung from a barrel, before the heat forced her to drop to the ground.

  Just like Ava to take away all my damn fun, Lena thought.

  A chirping buzz came from around the shipping port, as the airship hovered in. All of the shippees quickly hid behind the tanks.

  “It’s OK,” Lena shouted. “It’s ours.”

  The airship settled and Dolfuse got out, holding Rory.

  Lena squeezed her hands into fists and stomped toward the senator. Dolfuse had had her fucking chance, and Lena had been the only one of them to fight to protect Rory. Lena held out her hands. “Thanks for keeping her safe.”

  Dolfuse hesitated, long enough for Lena to consider punching her between the eyes, but with a frown she placed the baby in Lena’s arms.

  Ava stepped from the airship as the engines faded to a stop. “Damn. It’s good to stretch my legs.”