Impact

by Rob Boffard

  She shuts her eyes, screwing them tightly together. “There isn’t going to be a lottery, is there?”

  Dax’s voice is quiet, gentle. “What would you do if you were in my position?”

  Anna opens her mouth to speak, but no words come out.

  “We’ve picked engineers, Air Lab techs, doctors.” He glances at Arroway. “The best and the brightest. We’re giving ourselves the best possible chance of surviving once we reach the ground. Something like this…”

  He pauses, tries again. “It’s too important to be left to a selection of random people. We’re talking about the survival of our species.”

  Anna raises her eyes to meet his. “And council members?”

  “What?”

  “You’re going, too. Aren’t you?”

  He shrugs. “Someone has to lead. We’re going to need structure and order down there.”

  For a long moment none of them moves. Anna wishes she wasn’t seeing things so clearly, wishes she wasn’t filling in the gaps. They’ll take the escape pods–all of them. Jordan is probably in on it–probably the one who started the fire. Dax and his friends will need the suits, after all, to transfer to the modified tug. Everybody else will be left behind. Even if they’re still alive by the time the Tenshi gets there, they won’t have any way to make it on board.

  Eventually, Dax says, “We can try and get you a space on the tug, if that’s what you want.”

  It’s his solicitousness, his reasonable tone, that finally kicks Anna back into action. She almost snarls, backing away from them. “I’m going to tell everyone,” she says. “They’re all going to hear what you’re doing.”

  She regrets the words the instant they are out of her mouth. She’s still alone with the two of them. What if Dax has a gun? What if he tries to stop her?

  “If you put a hand on me, I’ll break every bone in your body,” she says.

  “Gods, Anna. No,” Dax says, horrified. “Who do you think I am? Oren Darnell? Nobody’s going to touch you.”

  “Doesn’t mean I’m going to keep this a secret.” Anna is already thinking ahead. She’s still going to run, as fast as she can, right to the main amphitheatre. Her dad. She needs to find her dad. He’ll know what to do.

  “You’re free to tell whoever you want,” Dax says. “But understand this. If you let everyone know that we’ve got the means to escape now, there’ll be anarchy. Complete breakdown. People will die.”

  “Yeah. Like you.”

  “Yes,” Dax says simply. “But then what happens? You think things will go back to normal? You think this will be resolved peacefully?”

  It’s impossible for Anna not to think of Achala Kumar. Of her desperation to reach her son.

  Dax smiles sadly. He walks past her, gesturing for Arroway to follow him. The doctor looks back at her, fear crossing his face.

  “Think about it,” Dax says. “It’s up to you. But you’d better be sure you’re making the right decision.”

  He and Arroway walk away, leaving Anna alone in the silence of the stairwell.

  44

  Riley

  The howl stops us in our tracks.

  For a moment, nobody moves. Harlan raises his face to the sky, head tilted very slightly.

  The sound fades, and he visibly relaxes. “That’s miles away. My guess is they don’t know we’re here.”

  He gives me a toothy smile. I try to smile back, don’t quite manage it.

  Eric seats his gun more comfortably in his arms. Harlan sees, shakes his head. “Doubt we’ll need it. They might be aggressive, but there’s easier prey than four folks with guns.”

  “Depends how hungry they are,” says Eric, more to himself than to us. Without another word, he starts walking again.

  My dark green jacket feels tight across my shoulders, padded out by the extra layers that Finkler insisted I wear. The grimy backpack on my shoulders keeps catching on branches. It’s heavy with supplies: food, water, blankets, flares. What I wouldn’t give for my old tracer pack, I think.

  It’s hard going. The ground is flat, but it’s boggy and uneven, with plenty of frozen puddles ready to catch an ankle. There are trees, but they’re spaced widely apart. Above our heads, the sky is low and grey, and there’s no sound but the crunch–snap of our footsteps.

  I’ve had some more time to think about what I baited Eric into, and it’s not looking any better. It’s all very well heading for a seaplane with someone who might be able to fly it, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to walk in and take it. Harlan and Eric have a couple of those ancient rifles, now with some ammunition, but it’s hard to imagine using them to take out a group of Nomads.

  “Hey.”

  I hadn’t noticed Finkler falling into step beside me. He hops over a patch of boggy ground, its surface speckled with ice, and lands with both feet. Despite his size, he seems to be doing better than all of us, even though he’s wearing a bulky grey coat that makes him look even larger than he is. The ground has started to slope upwards, and there are more trees now, their bare branches reaching to the sky.

  “How’s the leg holding up?” he says. “Not that I’m worried or anything.”

  I smile, then look away into the distance. “Hurts a little, but I can handle it.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  There are two fallen trees blocking our path, their branches standing straight up, their trunks caked with brittle moss. Finkler helps me over them, or tries to, holding out a hand to me even as he’s struggling to keep his own balance. I wave him off, clambering over the trunks and hopping down on the other side. When I look up, I see that Harlan and Eric have reached the top of the slope, silhouetted against the sky.

  “So what’s the deal with them?” I say.

  Finkler hits the ground behind me with a thud. He nearly topples over, and I have to steady him, holding his shoulder as he finds his feet.

  “Who?” he says, dusting himself off. “Harlan and Eric?”

  “I get that they used to be together, but why doesn’t Harlan live with the rest of you?”

  Finkler doesn’t answer for a minute. As we trudge in silence up the hill, I start thinking that I’ve gone too far, but then he says, “They had a kid, you know.”

  “Had?” I raise my eyes to the figure of Harlan, gazing about him at the top of the ridge. Eric is swigging from a bottle of water, shivering slightly in the cold.

  “She’d be about your age now,” Finkler says. “Name of Samantha. Nomads killed her parents down in Utah on a raid when she was a baby. Eric saved her life, and he and Harlan took her in.”

  “What happened to her?” My throat is dry, and it’s not because I’m thirsty. I dig in my pocket, hardly aware I’m doing it, and stick a cattail leaf into my mouth, chewing hard. My legs are burning from the climb, my upper back aching from the weight of the pack.

  “They loved that kid. We all did. She had this smile like… Anyway, she was out hunting with Harlan one day, and they startled a bear.”

  “Gods,” I say, more to myself than to him. I can fill in the blanks myself. I’ve never seen a bear, but I’ve seen pictures of one. Fur and teeth and muscle and claws.

  “Eric had told Harlan not to take her, but that wasn’t going to happen. Harlan doted on Samantha. He wanted to show her everything.”

  Finkler speaks in a matter-of-fact tone, which makes his words so much worse.

  “The bear went for Samantha first. Harlan couldn’t stop it. He tried to fight it off, but if he hadn’t run when he did, he’d be dead too.”

  Ahead of me, Harlan laughs at something Eric said. Apparently it wasn’t meant to be funny, because Eric meets it with a scowl.

  “After Harlan came back,” Finkler says, “Eric went out by himself.”

  The tooth. On the string around Eric’s neck.

  “Eric told him to get the hell out,” Finkler says, and gives a bitter laugh. “Last night’s the first time I’ve seen him in three years.”

  Harla
n’s face comes back to me, that night in the cave. It feels like decades ago. I remember the expression on his face–the sheer desperation. You gotta tell ’em I helped you. You gotta tell ’em I looked after you, all right? Made sure you were OK.

  We crest the ridge. There’s a flat part, an open plateau with tufts of grass sticking up through the mud. The forest sweeps away below us, and we begin picking our way down the slope. It’s hard going; the ground is still slippery, and the rocks embedded in the slope aren’t tight enough to hold onto. Harlan and Eric have already reached the bottom.

  “Tell me something,” Finkler says. “What happened to you up there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He jabs a finger at the sky. “You tumble into my operating room, claiming that you crash-landed after escaping from a space station. That must be quite a story.”

  I open my mouth to tell him–but how do I even start? Janice Okwembu, Amira, my father, Morgan Knox, Resin, the mad escape from the dock, all of it. It’s like a hunk of metal, with layers and layers of rust, the oxidation building on itself until you can’t see the original shape underneath, the whole thing ugly and misshapen, with sharp edges that you have to be careful around.

  “It’s OK,” Finkler says. He has a weird, crooked smile on his face. “I don’t mean to pry.”

  “No, it’s just—”

  “But listen. You need to deal with that anger, and you need to deal with it soon.”

  His words stun me, although I’m careful not to show it. I shrug, but it’s an unnatural motion, as if I have to instruct each individual muscle to move. “I just want to find my friends.”

  We’ve reached a steep part of the slope, and he has to watch his footing as he climbs down it. “Post.” He takes a step. “Traumatic.” Another, pausing to catch his balance. “Stress. Disorder.”

  He stops and looks at me, his eyes narrowed, breathing hard. “You think I haven’t seen this a dozen times before? I’ve dug enough bullets out of people, done plenty of amputations. Even read a couple of books. I’m no psychologist, but I’m not stupid. How are the hallucinations?”

  “What you talking about?”

  “Please. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve had plenty of hallucinations myself, but they’re usually self-induced? If you get my meaning? I’m not sure I want the ones you’re having.”

  “I’m not hallucinating.” But I can’t help thinking of how I thought Eric was Amira. Such a small thing, so small I’d almost forgotten about it. And the voice inside me. Quiet, calm, insistent. Like part of my mind has decided to take over.

  He goes on as if I hadn’t spoken. “OK. You’re not hallucinating. There’s no anger in you. No aggression. You don’t feel guilty that your friends might be dead, and you’re a completely well-adjusted person with absolutely no fixation on a completely impossible task.”

  He purses his lips. “What do you want, Riley?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When this is all over. After you and your buddies are back together. What are you going to do?”

  I stare at him. Because, right then, I realise I don’t know. So far, all I’ve thought about is getting to Alaska. Finding Carver and Prakesh, confronting Okwembu. I haven’t even considered what’ll happen after that.

  I have a better idea of what I don’t want. I don’t want to be scared. I don’t want to be cold, or hungry, and I don’t want to keep fighting people who want to hurt me.

  I don’t want to be alone. And at this moment I don’t know whether I want Prakesh or Carver to be with me. As long as someone is.

  My thoughts are interrupted as Eric’s voice reaches us. “Finkler.”

  He and Harlan have stopped dead, crouching down on top of a huge spear rock jutting out of the hill. Without looking back, he motions for us to get down. I drop to a crouch, then all fours, letting my pack slip off my shoulders. Moving as quickly as I can, I scoot across the ground until I’m level with Harlan. There’s an icy wind slicing through the trees, cutting through my jacket like it isn’t there.

  What I see takes my breath away.

  We’re perhaps a hundred feet up on the hillside, with Fish Lake stretching below us. It’s more water than I’ve ever seen in one place, more water than I could ever imagine. It goes on forever, miles long. Under the low-hanging clouds, the water is the colour of burnished metal. The surface isn’t still: I can see the water forming into waves with white caps, battering against the shore. The waves look tiny, as if I could rub them out with a finger.

  The forest goes right up to the shore on all sides, the trees hanging down, reaching for the water. I can see right into the distance, right to the icy mountains with their peaks shrouded in the clouds.

  Finkler is cursing and grumbling behind me as he tries to come up on our viewpoint. Harlan beckons me over, and points to a spot on the shore below.

  Not just one seaplane, but two. Parked nose to tail, bobbing up and down as the waves hit them. Unlike the one in Whitehorse, these have wings, each one holding a single engine and a spiky propeller. They’re just offshore, next to a simple floating platform, cobbled together from barrels and misshapen wooden planks. There’s a figure standing on the platform, hefting a tank. I can’t make out the details, but it looks as if he’s fuelling the plane, pouring liquid into the engine.

  Harlan points again, and I see the tents, their grey fabric surfaces just visible through the trees. I can see the glint and glimmer of a fire, and there’s a wisp of smoke snaking through the branches.

  Eric has a pair of binoculars out, gunmetal grey, the lenses chipped. He’s scanning the shoreline.

  “How many?” says Harlan.

  “Can’t say,” Eric says.

  Eric crawls backwards off the rock, then slips into the trees. After a confused moment, the rest of us follow.

  Once we’re back in cover, we stand up. My legs are freezing, my toes almost completely numb. “OK,” I say, thinking hard, reaching for my abandoned pack. “If we can—”

  “No.”

  Eric isn’t even looking at me. He’s shouldering his own pack, making as if to leave.

  Worry fills me, like an expanding bubble, pushing up through my body. “We can take them,” I say, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. “We just need a plan.”

  “We don’t know how many there are down there,” Eric says. “But two seaplanes? That means way too many Nomads.”

  “OK,” I say again. “We wait until it’s dark. They can’t shoot what they can’t see, right? And we can get closer, get numbers. Maybe even sneak past, take a plane.”

  “You don’t know much, do you?” Eric says, scorn dripping from his voice. “You know how much noise a plane makes when you turn it on?”

  Finkler brightens. “What about starting a fire? We could burn them out.” He grins. “That’d be a lot of fun, actually.”

  Harlan looks around him. “Wood’s too wet. No way we’d get it big enough. Even if we did, how are you planning on controlling it?”

  Finkler’s shoulders sag. I close my eyes, almost groaning in frustration. There’s got to be a way. What if we could push a plane out into the lake? Start it away from the shore? No–the Nomads still have guns, and they’d still be able to shoot at the plane. We’d be a static target.

  “So we come back with more people,” I say. I’m grasping at ideas now, desperately trying to find something that will work. “We go back to Whitehorse and—”

  “Wrong.” Eric’s voice has hardened again. “I can’t ask my men to risk their lives because you want a seaplane. We’re done.”

  He turns to go. Harlan and Finkler are getting ready, too, putting on their packs in silence. In the silence, another wolf howl drifts across the forest. It sounds as if it’s a little closer.

  “Harlan,” I say.

  “He’s right,” Harlan says. He won’t meet my eyes. “I’m sorry, but we have to—”

  “Tell me again,” I say. “About the wolves. About how they track
their prey.” I keep my voice quiet and even. A tiny spark of an idea is flickering in my mind.

  Harlan’s brow furrows in confusion. “Well, it’s like I said, they’ve been getting more aggressive every year. Chances are they still got a little bit of our scent, but we’ll be back in Whitehorse long before they…”

  He stops when he sees the expression on my face. I’m barely listening. The spark has ignited a fire, and the idea itself is flaring brightly. Finkler looks back and forth between us, puzzled.

  “No,” Harlan says, his eyes wide. “Oh no. No. That’s suicide.”

  He’s right. It doesn’t stop a smile from spreading across my face.

  45

  Riley

  I concentrate on my breathing.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been out here. I gave up keeping track hours ago. The night is bitterly cold, and there’s nothing for me to do but try and keep my attention on the forest around me, watching for movement in the trees. My eyes are adjusted to the darkness now, and I can make out white vapour, curling in front of me with every breath.

  I’m a hundred yards or so up the slope from the Nomads’ camp. I can see the glimmer of their fire through the trees. I picked this spot carefully: there’s a slight depression in the slope, shielded from the wind, and there’s a relatively straight path through the trees to the camp. I scouted it out as the last of the daylight faded. I also made sure to test my leg, doing a couple of sprints in a clearing a short distance away. It hurts, and the cold makes the pain worse, but running won’t be a problem.

  Harlan begged me not to do this. So did Finkler. Even Eric was surprised that I was considering it–he told me it was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. He’s probably right, but I think that’s also why he and Finkler haven’t left yet. The risk is all on me. If I mess this up, I die. Eric and the others can walk away, slipping back through the forest. If I don’t, then Eric gets his seaplane–and this particular group of Nomads won’t bother him and his people any more.

  I told them to get as close to the camp as they could, and be ready to go. All they could do was insist I wear extra clothing: a thicker jacket, a scarf, a thin beanie. It helps, but only a little. I have my hands jammed deep in the pockets of the jacket, and every so often I windmill my arms to keep my body temperature up.