Under Falling Skies

by Kate MacLeod

  “Three days and some change left sitting out this flare,” Warrior said, then brought the mug back to Ottilie’s lips. Ottilie was more alert this time, grasping the mug in her own hands to control what she swallowed. She set it back down with a deep sigh and Warrior left her alone with it, moving to stand behind Liv at the doorway.

  “Are you going to deliberately set off an alarm?” Scout asked.

  “If I have to. She can’t hide away until we’re gone, that’s for sure.”

  “Why don’t you use one of your clever gadgets to get us into the kitchen?” Liv asked. “We’re nearly out of coffee, and I’d like something to eat besides a self-heating ready-made meal.”

  As if on cue, Clementine tore open another package, pulling the plastic strip out of the bottom of the tray to activate the heating element. The food inside began to bubble, the bubbling built to a crescendo, and Clementine split the top open and went back to shoveling food into her mouth bite after bite.

  “She sure does eat a lot for such a little thing,” Warrior observed.

  “You,” Ottilie said, filling the sound with all her hate and rage. “This is your fault.” She was still looking down at the mug clenched tightly in her hands, but then she lifted her head and fixed those steely eyes on Liv, who sat smirking in her hover chair.

  “My fault?” Liv said.

  “Yes, your fault. But I don’t quite understand why. What do you gain from this?”

  “Me? Nothing,” Liv said with a shrug. “You are correct: I have nothing to gain, no motive, no reason at all to care about you or your lover. It does seem rather strange that it could be my fault, your little tiff.”

  Ottilie gripped the mug tighter still. Then she sighed, taking what was perhaps meant to be a calming breath, and drank down the rest of the contents of the mug in one long swallow.

  Then she flung the mug at Liv with impressive accuracy. The stainless-steel mug toppled through the air end over end before striking Liv in the forehead with a sound like an ill-tuned bell.

  “You stupid bitch, you ought to be thanking me,” Liv growled, putting a hand to the red mark on her forehead. The stainless-steel mug didn’t have enough weight to do any real damage, but Liv was directing her chair toward the table like she intended to run right over Ottilie, who was waiting for her with arms crossed and a look of challenge on her face.

  “We have bigger problems,” Warrior said. “Just sit quietly, both of you.”

  Liv relented, chin held high in smug superiority at being the master of her own emotions when Ottilie so clearly wasn’t. She steered her chair to the farthest place at the table from Ottilie and parked there to watch what Warrior was going to do next.

  “We should get in there, turn on all the lights, check all the cameras,” Scout said, trying to see what was on the monitors without leaning into the doorway.

  “Step back,” Warrior said. “And hold your dogs.”

  Only then did Scout notice that Girl was growling again, an almost subsonic sound but a persistent one. She was watching Clementine intently, and Clementine was staring right back at her. Scout caught Girl’s collar and pulled her away, bringing her and Shadow back to the pallet they had slept on. Ottilie got up from the table and went to the bar, taking out another mug and half filling it from the bottle. Liv was watching her every move, that sardonic smile never leaving her face.

  Scout had expected Warrior to produce another device from her belt to disable the systems protecting the doorway. But Warrior had a more low-tech approach in mind. She just raised an arm and stuck it into the communications room. The doorway flashed red and something popped, then Warrior was falling flat onto her back, bolts of electricity dancing around her still-outthrust arm.

  “You okay?” Scout asked when Warrior hadn’t moved.

  “Yeah,” Warrior said, slowly lowering her arm. “Give me a minute.”

  “Did you take it down?” Scout asked, drawing nearer. The doorway looked just as blandly innocent as ever.

  “No, I don’t think so. But I bet I got Viola’s attention.”

  Scout heard a bang, the sound of the hatch to Viola’s private room being thrown back against the wall. She was stomping and cursing as she approached, kicking a fallen pillow out of her way as she crossed the barracks.

  Then the sound of her curses was drowned out by a startled scream, and Scout turned to see Liv struggling with both arms to hold Ottilie’s knife-wielding hand at bay.

  17

  Warrior pulled her gun from its hiding place at the small of her back, but the dogs were faster. Shadow raised the alarm, leaping into the air over and over again, ever higher as he barked. But Girl went straight for Ottilie, tackling her and knocking her to the ground. The knife fell from her hand as she hit the floor, skittering away to disappear behind the bar.

  “Get this dog off me!” Ottilie shouted.

  “I don’t know, maybe we should leave her there,” Warrior said, putting her gun away. With all eyes on the knife fight and the dogs, Scout wasn’t sure if the others had even seen it. “Scout, get the dog off her.”

  “Girl, come!” Scout said. Shadow responded first, trotting back to Scout’s side to stand close to her calf. Girl looked back at him, then took her paws off Ottilie’s chest to follow.

  “Grab the knife,” Warrior whispered to Scout, then put out a hand to help Ottilie to her feet. But she didn’t let go once Ottilie was up. She hooked her foot around the leg of one of the chairs, spinning it around and pushing Ottilie back into it. She had both of Ottilie’s wrists cuffed to the arms of the chair before Ottilie could even object.

  “You can’t do this. This isn’t your jurisdiction,” Ottilie said darkly.

  “I’m not arresting you, I’m keeping you out of trouble,” Warrior said.

  “Then tie her up too,” Ottilie said, pointing at Liv with her chin.

  “What good would that do?” Scout asked. “It’s not her hands that are the problem. It’s her mouth. Why did you try to jump her, Ottilie?”

  Ottilie didn’t answer, just silently fumed. There was a red tinge to her cheeks that Scout could almost take for embarrassment. Ottilie struck Scout as someone largely driven by emotion and impulse, someone for whom stabbing was an appropriate response to Liv’s whispered innuendos and provoking, “knowing” glances. But Warrior’s reflective lenses were fixed on her now, and Scout knew just how that gaze felt, like being judged and found wanting.

  It was nice to know it wasn’t just Scout who felt like she didn’t measure up.

  “Knife, Scout,” Warrior said, then turned as Viola finally passed through the doorway.

  “I’m guessing you’re the one trying to bust into my space. Anybody else would still be out cold,” Viola growled at Warrior.

  “Or dead?”

  “No, not yet, but don’t think I’m not considering cranking it up.”

  Scout found the knife under the shelving behind the bar and brought it back to Warrior.

  “That’s mine,” Ottilie said, trying to twist her wrists out of her bonds.

  “I’ll give it back to you in three days,” Warrior said. It wasn’t a very large knife, more suited to paring an apple than murdering a grown woman. She tucked it into a pouch on her hip.

  “Why was she trying to stab Liv?” Viola asked. “Did Liv kill Ruth?”

  “No, she killed Ebba!” Ottilie said, trying to tuck her thumbs in tightly enough to slip her hands free.

  “I’d sit still if I were you. Those are going to keep tightening if you struggle.”

  Ottilie looked down at her hands, which were already turning white from lack of blood flow, but she continued to twist and pull, shooting dark looks to first Warrior and then Liv.

  “Ebba’s dead?” Viola asked. “Ebba killed Ruth?”

  “Ebba’s death was an accident, and we still don’t know who killed Ruth,” Warrior said.

  “But we think someone is creeping around in the hangar,” Scout said to Viola.

  “I doubt tha
t,” Viola said. “All the doors between there and the surface have been buried for decades.”

  “There’s an air shaft to the surface,” Warrior said.

  “More than one,” Viola said.

  “One that’s been left open.”

  Viola gave Warrior a disbelieving look but then relented, going back into the communications room to look at her monitors. “The solar particle detectors should have gone off,” she mumbled to herself as she switched her screen through multiple monitor views so fast Scout didn’t know how she could be taking any of it in.

  “Can I come in?” Warrior asked.

  “No,” Viola said curtly.

  “Look, I’m not going to be satisfied until I’ve scoured every centimeter of this place. You might as well just let me do it.”

  “I don’t have to let you do anything,” Viola shot back.

  “You’d be wise to,” Warrior said, unperturbed by Viola’s growing bad temper.

  “So, I have a question,” Liv said conversationally.

  “We can worry about coffee later,” Warrior said over her shoulder.

  “No, not that,” Liv said. “This bottle here. I was noticing the brand.”

  “I noticed that myself,” Ottilie said, finally sitting still.

  Scout went back to the bar and picked up the bottle. “Star’s End Bourbon,” she said out loud.

  Warrior shrugged and turned back to continue watching Viola.

  “Star’s End isn’t a local brand. Although I can guess why you’ve heard of it,” Liv said, the last directed at Ottilie.

  “Space Farer bourbon?” Scout guessed.

  “Goods have been moving through here since planetfall,” Viola said. “That’s a lot of war-free decades of unrestricted trade. Nothing strange about the occasional foreign origin of anything.”

  Scout turned the bottle over in her hands. “It says it was bottled ten years ago. That’s right in wartime.”

  Viola scowled at her. “You want me to vent all the oxygen out of that room? Stay out of my business.”

  Scout quickly put the bottle down on the table, shooting a nervous glance to Warrior, but Warrior gave a small shake of her head. “It’s an empty threat. This place is too porous for that. Although, to be fair, bottled ten years ago doesn’t mean it came here right after. For all we know she acquired it a week ago.”

  “No, I’m sure it was dropped from space during wartime,” Liv said, steepling her fingers together under her chin. “Sounds like someone rewarded an informant.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Viola grumbled, getting up from her chair to stand near the doorway.

  “I don’t think any of this is relevant,” Warrior said with a frustrated sigh.

  “Of course it’s relevant,” Liv said blithely. “Ruth was a spy, now she’s dead. This woman is an informant, working with our enemies in the sky, and Ruth died in her home.”

  “I am not an informant,” Viola said through gritted teeth.

  “What could she inform on way out here?” Scout asked.

  “Anything she can see with all that equipment,” Liv said. “Equipment so old it’s still tied into everything up above and down here. Does the planetary government even know this place exists?”

  “Do they?” Ottilie pressed when Viola didn’t answer.

  “Someone must know somewhere. There are records,” Viola said.

  “Did you know when the asteroids were coming?” Scout asked. Viola flushed guiltily but wouldn’t meet Scout’s eyes. “Did you know? Could you have warned people?”

  “Not in time,” Viola said, shoulders slumping. She passed through the doorway to where the bottle sat on the table. She picked it up, looking over the label as if it were all new to her. Then she set it back down without taking a drink. “There wouldn’t have been enough time to evacuate everyone.”

  “You did know,” Scout said. “You knew and said nothing.”

  “I couldn’t have stopped it. The planetary government couldn’t have stopped it, not even with the big guns. They just would have turned one big city-destroying rock into a shower of city-destroying debris.”

  “But people could have gotten out,” Scout persisted.

  “Not enough. There wasn’t enough time! Don’t you see? If I told the head of government, only those deemed the most important would have gotten away. They wouldn’t have raised the alarm, just gotten their own people out and left the rest to die. I loathed that very idea.”

  “So? You could have told everyone.”

  “I’m telling you, most of them would have never gotten out in time. The cities weren’t designed for evacuation. Those gateways out of the dome are too few and too narrow. People would have bottlenecked, panicked, died in terrible fear. At least without warning it was a fast death.”

  “Fast,” Ottilie said as if the word were bitter on her tongue.

  “How much warning?” Scout asked. “Like, how many hours?”

  “I don’t know,” Viola said, throwing her arms up in the air. “Most days I wasn’t even watching. When I was . . . I don’t know, an hour or two?”

  Scout flopped down on the pallet, letting the dogs come close to each side of her. So it had been possible to know in advance. If Viola had known ahead of time, perhaps her father really had as well.

  But why had he sent her away? Did he too worry that panicked people trying to flee the city would get bottlenecked in the gateways?

  Why didn’t he at least have her take her brother with?

  “You should have been watching and warning,” Liv said. “If you had all this information, why wouldn’t you?”

  “Because the first time I saw it, I realized I could only help the elite. And I chose not to. And after that, I stopped watching,” Viola said. Her lips were pressed tightly together and her eyes were glassily bright but she shed no tears.

  “You never knew?” Scout asked Liv.

  Liv looked horrified at that question. “Of course not!”

  “Then my parents didn’t know either?” Scout couldn’t bear to look at anyone, just down at the dusty toes of her own boots as she waited for her answer.

  “Honestly, I don’t know. If they were who I think they were, you’d think they would’ve had a warning. Perhaps they had orders. Perhaps they could only get you out,” Liv said.

  “Oh, stop it,” Warrior said, her voice so low it was nearly a growl. “You know nothing, you’re just speculating. Stop messing with her head.”

  “She deserves to know the truth,” Liv said with almost sincere innocence.

  “Yes, she does,” Warrior snapped, moving over to put a hand on Scout’s shoulder. “Don’t listen to her, kid. We talked about this before, remember?”

  “But this would make so much more sense,” Scout said, still looking at her own boots as she blinked back tears. “Just not being there when it happened for no reason at all, that makes no sense.”

  “Life frequently makes no sense,” Warrior said. “And things happen for reasons that have nothing to do with most of us. A political squabble becomes a shooting war, and the side that’s up in orbit deploys a horrifically nasty advantage on their enemy. For political reasons. Believe me, I’ve been over a goodly chunk of this galaxy and I can promise you, what seems like a reasonable action to a politician often makes no sense to the ones actually being hurt.”

  Scout nodded, for the moment still winning her own battle against the urge to break down in tears. She was functioning on too much coffee and too little sleep, but still. She wasn’t a kid anymore.

  “Kid, I’m sorry all this happened to you. It doesn’t make sense to me either. But don’t twist your memories of your parents to try to make sense of the unreasonable. Especially not to fit someone else’s world view. You’ll find your own peace with it someday. And I know it sucks to hear ‘be patient,’ but that’s all I’ve got.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about the circumstances on this world,” Liv said.

  “I’m not fixing to learn about t
hem by listening to you,” Warrior said, the dangerous edge back in her voice. “You’ll stop talking or I’ll be gagging you. Am I understood?”

  Liv pulled another face of exaggerated innocence but nodded mutely.

  “Good. Now Scout, come help me,” Warrior said. Scout looked up at last to see Warrior in the communications room pushing buttons. She moved to join her, but Viola was faster.

  “Don’t touch that!” Viola snapped. “What are you doing?”

  “Lights,” Warrior said. “Cameras. Security feeds. I need to know if we’re alone or not.”

  “That camera was on us in the main room,” Liv said, her hover chair in the doorway as she pointed to one of the monitors, her vow of silence already forgotten. “Roll it back. Maybe we can find the poisoner.”

  “Later,” Warrior said shortly, brushing aside Viola’s hands as she tried to stop her from touching the equipment. “Just let me do this.”

  “I should have never let you all in here,” Viola said.

  “You couldn’t have really kept us out,” Warrior said. “Look at this, all these service shafts. Some of them are buried, but plenty of them aren’t. It isn’t remotely hard to get in here.”

  “Should we find a way to secure everything?” Scout asked. She leaned in as Warrior switched from camera view to camera view of empty hallways, dark rooms, Ebba under a blood-soaked towel. She was vaguely aware of Girl doing her subsonic growl again, of Viola and Liv crowding close behind her and Warrior, but she tuned it out, focusing on finding any sign of an intruder.

  Her focus was shattered as the bottle fell from the table behind them and exploded into fragments of glass, the sound tinkling on after the first burst like whistling sparks falling from a firework.

  Then the dogs were barking in real earnest.

  18

  “Which one of them did it?” Viola asked, but Liv’s chair was blocking the way for any of them to get back into the main room.

  “Can’t you shut those dogs up?” Liv demanded, then flinched back as Warrior lunged at her. But she wasn’t attacking her, just hopping over the top of Liv’s hover chair to run to Ottilie’s side.