by K. Makansi
“Wait,” Soren interrupts. “Who’s they?”
“They’re called the Enforcers, but we all just call them Boss. They’re the guards and the administrators at the Farms. They’re in charge of assigning tasks and passing out the Dieticians’ food and stuff like that.”
“So what’s a silo, and what do you do in one?” I ask.
Bear leans back. “There’s these tall structures, silos, where the grain is stored. When the grain is moist, it’ll start decomposing, and it starts to clump up and gets pretty nasty. We go in and break up the clumps.”
“Why are clumps bad?” I ask.
“Makes it hard to get out of the silo and into trucks for transport, I suppose. Maybe causes problems for processing, I don’t know. We just grow the crops. After it’s trucked away, I have no idea what happens to it.”
“Okay, so what happened in the silo?” Soren asks.
“I don’t know in his case. Sometimes a sinkhole forms and the grain turns into a giant funnel, sucking everything down. If you don’t have your harness on, you go down too and drown in the grain. Or if you’re walking on the top level, scraping clumps off the sides of the bin, the whole pile can collapse on you and one minute you’re breathing air and the next minute you’re ten feet under, breathing corn. Probably Sam’s weight collapsed a load of grain around him—everyone knew he was too big for the silos. That’s why it was so crazy when Boss put him up for silo duty. Anyway, if the harness don’t hold or your partner don’t pull you up, tu seras mort.”
“But obviously Sam didn’t die,” Soren says.
“No, the harness held. Me and a couple of friends managed to pull him up. But he was so heavy, it took us longer than it should’ve. He was under too long. Never was quite right after it. Brain damage, the doctors said. They wanted to euthanize him. But then the chief Boss figured it didn’t take too much brains to do what Sam did. Since he was dumber than a box of rocks now, at least he wouldn’t cause more trouble. So they fixed him up and put him back to work.
“Problem was, after that they worked him like an animal. Well, after that, he was an animal. Just a big dumb ox, a work horse that toiled from sunup to sundown without ever saying a word.” Bear stops, his eyes cloudy with memories. He sniffs and wipes his face on his sleeve.
“So you left,” Soren prods, gently.
“Yeah. About month ago. They were gonna work him to death. And he’d looked after me, so I decided to look after him. We snuck out one night when some of the uppity-ups from Okaria were doing a visit. There was a big fête and all the Bosses was so busy kissing ass that they didn’t savvy when we just walked out through the unlocked front gate. It was unreal. We’ve been habitating out here since, trying to make our way west. There are others out here, too. Some of ’em will give you a helping hand. We met up with a healer who tried to help Sam, but there wasn’t nothin’ she could do for him. Damage was already done. But she was nice. And her husband … he was a poet, sang songs and such.”
He stops and studies my face as I hold my breath. Is he talking about my parents? They travel in disguise, but could he have recognized them? But then he shakes his head and goes on. “But some….” He stops and is quiet for a while. Neither Soren nor I press him.
“Did you … like living at the Farm?” I ask, my voice quiet, trembling.
“Like it?” he asks, looking up with a perplexed expression, as though he’s never quite thought about this question. “I didn’t know anything different, ’till I got out to the Wilds. I guess I liked it well enough. It sure was a lot easier than being out here. But I liked that out here we could do what we wanted.” He thinks about this for a minute. “So much for my brains Sam thought so much of, huh?” he jokes weakly, with a pathetic, weepy smile. He takes a deep breath and shudders visibly. “’Stead of saving Sam, I got him killed.
“So, Remy Alexander and Soren Skaarsgard, you going to kill me now? I really wouldn’t mind. Just do it quick.” He looks at Soren, and then his eyes flick back and settle on me. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me. Cold, unflinching. “You do it. A flick of the wrist. That’s the way I want to go. Just like Sam.”
26 - VALE
Winter 2, Sector Annum 106 07h31
Gregorian Calendar: December 22
I’m listening to Jeremiah snore quietly as I load up the map again. I didn’t sleep well, so I’ve found myself in need of a distraction. My stomach growls, but I resist the temptation to open another Mealpak. The food will only last so long—I can’t go stuffing my face at every opportunity. I start tracing a path from our current location to the nearest sighted Outsider camp, due west about a hundred kilometers. If we go there, will we find anyone? Will Chan-Yu be with them? Will Remy? I realize that the odds of finding the Outsiders with just a rumor and a few photos to go off of are pretty slim. We’d have to do a lot of flying, checking back and forth, crosshatching over the land. And even then, there’s no guarantee. Our drones haven’t had much luck photographing them, so we know they’re evasive. What’s to say we’ll succeed where the drones haven’t?
It’s a dismal, grey day outside, but it doesn’t look like it’s raining. The light is bright enough to illuminate the interior of the airship, but not much more than that. I wish I’d thought to dim the panels again so we could sleep longer, but now I’m awake. Nothing will change that.
I can’t stop reliving my conversation with my parents last night. I still don’t understand—none of it makes sense. I’m sorry, Vale, she said, but it had to be done. Why? What did Remy and Soren do that made my mother believe they were such a threat and a danger that she had to have them killed?
I check the distance to the Resistance base I pointed out to Miah last night. It’s farther away, at least two hundred kilometers. Only an hour by airship, though. Apprehension sets in as soon as I begin virtually navigating to the abandoned town on the blurry, pixilated map. Who will be there, and what will they do to me?
I turn back to find Jeremiah stirring, stretching his arms and rubbing his eyes.
“Morning,” I call casually. I toss a canister of water at him, which, much to my surprise, he reaches out and catches instinctively. “Nice reactions,” I add.
“Thanks,” he says groggily. He pops the top on the canister and starts drinking as he sits up.
“Sleep well?”
“About as well as I could have in these chairs. I half wish we’d set up the tent outside for a little more space.”
“As if,” I laugh. “We’d have been sleeping on top of each other. I like you, Miah, but not that much.”
“What’s the point of a tent if you can’t sleep in it?” he grumbles.
“Miah,” I say, cutting to the chase, “I think we should go find the Outsiders.” I wait for his inevitable argument, but none comes. I search for his eyes with my own, but he’s stretching, checking the controls on the Sarus, pulling his boots back on over his pants. When it becomes clear he’s not going to respond, I fill the silence. “I think Chan-Yu will have found a way to get back to them. Even if Remy and Soren aren’t with him, we can find out from him whether or not they’re safe and decide what to do from there.”
Jeremiah just nods.
“No argument?” I ask, prodding him. His silence is unnerving. Usually so comic and quick to respond, his dull, quiet manner is peculiar. Maybe he’s just groggy, I tell myself. He swivels slowly in his chair and looks, not at me, but past me.
“I just think you’re postponing the inevitable because you’re afraid.” His eyes finally settle on me.
“Well,” I admit, “I am. I’m terrified. I saw what happened to Remy and Soren, and to be perfectly honest, I’m afraid of being treated the same way my parents treated them. I don’t feel like walking into a death trap.” I take a breath.
“Okay.” He shrugs, conceding. “I get it. I don’t think they’re going to kill you, but you know more about them than I do. If you think that’s a possibility, let’s steer clear. Let’s go find the Outsiders.”
A twinge of the classic Jeremiah Sayyid grin crosses his face, and he turns back to the controls. “I bet the horse riders are surprised when we show up in this swank ride.”
“Yeah, they definitely don’t have the same kind of flight capabilities we do. I don’t even know if they have any airships. None have ever been sighted.”
“As usual, you’re taking everything I say too seriously. I meant we should buzz the treetops when we find them.”
“Oh, right, because that’s definitely the easiest way to win their hearts and convince them to let us band together with them,” I say. “Great plan, Miah.”
“Thank you,” he says with a grin.
****
We fly due south across the lake, and Jeremiah and I spend the next few hours flying aimlessly between the sites on the map that look like Outsider camps. The terrain is beautiful but rugged with mountains in the distance and bare rock outcroppings sticking up from the wide expanses of green and brown like fierce, grey sentinels. Most of the area is covered by tall grasses, shrubs, or, at the higher elevations, pine and fir trees, but occasionally we come across blackened open spaces where even the skeletons of trees that have obviously been burned recently—maybe forest fires?—are few and far between. Once we see a spot that looks like it might have been recently occupied, where the shrub has been beaten back slightly and the wild grass trampled underfoot. But there’s nothing else, and no signs indicating where they might have gone.
We’re halfway to the next site when the communication feed goes insane. It starts flashing blue and red, and even when I turn the volume down, the message keeps playing.
“Valerian Orleán, please report, Valerian Orleán, indicate location and status,” the feed says over and over again, crackling with static. There’s no visual, no hologram, just audio. Then the interface starts going crazy, and the ship banks steeply to the right and begins to pick up speed.
“Override the route!” Miah yells. “Somehow they’ve taken over the ship!”
I power down the guidance system, and the ship levels off. I breathe a sigh of relief—at least we’re not flying back towards Sector territory. Only problem is, now we don’t have a route programmed. “Looks like we’ve got to fly this thing the old-fashioned way.” I slide up the control panel and it disappears soundlessly into the nose of the ship, exposing an antique interface complete with dials, switches, and what they used to call “joysticks.” This will allow me to pilot the Sarus manually. Most airships don’t have a system like this because, if you get into trouble, Sector air traffic control just overrides your system and brings you down safely. But Dad taught himself to fly on an old plane he and some friends rebuilt back when they were at the Academy, and he always said that if you’re going to be a pilot, you need to know how to keep your bird aloft and land her safely even when all your systems fail. Trouble is, I never really saw the need, and I’ve only ever used the system on a simulator and only then because Dad insisted.
“We must have missed something in the code,” I say, as I fiddle with levers and dials, trying to remember how the old-fashioned system works.
“Yeah, but what?” he looks over at me, obviously worried. “We went through it line by line.”
“I don’t know, but—” We’re thrown sideways as the Sarus tips to the right again. I grab hold of the joystick and push it left to get us back on track, headed away from the Sector. Nothing happens. I push it harder. Still nothing.
“We’re going to have to power everything down.” Miah growls.
“What do you mean ‘everything’?”
“Everything except internal controls.” He starts scanning the old dials, pushing buttons and flipping switches. “I’m turning off all electrical systems so drones trying to track us can’t pick up any signals. All we’ve got now is our cloaking and your flying skills.”
“Great.” I’m gripping my joystick so hard my knuckles are white, but the Sarus keeps accelerating, keeps heading back east until suddenly I feel her start to respond. Miah must have pushed the right combination of buttons to regain control of the ship. I push the joystick left and her nose lifts and we tilt back and away.
“Valerian Orleán, please report, Valerian Orleán, indicate location and status,” continues to repeat, and I think of Aulion and what waits back home if the Sarus betrays us and flies us straight back to the Sector.
“What the fuck?” Miah yells and grips his seat as the ship banks right again.
“You’re gonna have to get into the electronics,” I say. “Pull the circuit breakers one at a time and find out what the hell is going on.”
Miah drops to the floor and pulls up the hatch, sticking his head down into the tight space that contains the humming boxes for all the ship’s systems. He reaches in and starts sliding the symbols on the touch screen to break the circuits. “Shit!”
“What?”
“How’d we miss this?”
“What? How’d we miss what?” I demand.
“An active beacon transmitter,” he cranes his neck to look up at me.
“But we scanned the ship for transmitters.”
“Apparently we missed it. But that’s not all.” He sticks his head back down in the hole. “You want the good news or the bad news?”
“Good news first.”
“I think we can regain partial control of the ship if we reactivate all but the autopilot systems and fly below the radar. As long as we stay low, they can’t see us even if something goes wrong with our cloaking.”
“Okay. What’s the bad news?”
“The auto-stabilization controls are on the same circuit breaker. As soon as I pull it, we’re going to be flying disabled, and every little move you make with that joystick of yours will be amplified.”
I think back to the simulation and the warnings about pilot-induced oscillation. “You don’t get motion sick, do you?” I ask, remembering the feeling of flying chaotically in the simulation module.
“I hope not,” he croaks out a laugh. “You ready? I’m going to pull it.”
“Ready,” I say and grip the joystick with both hands. I hold my body still, poised and wary of any sudden movement. The ship is still accelerating and heading back toward Sector airspace. I need to turn us back south and get us out of here, but I have to do it gently, delicately.
Miah struggles back into his seat and shows me the transmitter as if it’s a prize. I hold the joystick steady as sweat rolls down my back. Small moves, I think. Small moves. I nudge the joystick left and the ship responds. Okay. I can do this. I nudge it again and we begin to track back north and west. This isn’t so hard. I glance over at Miah and he’s smiling. I reach up with one hand to wipe my forehead and the joystick moves left and forward and this time the ship dives, sending us into a roll and lifting us out of our seats. “Fuck!” I yell and grab for the harness that I’ve never used before. I pull right, trying to ease us out of the roll, but my knee knocks into the joystick and we’re tumbling, and all I can hear is Jeremiah yelling: “Pull back, pull back. We’re going to hit the trees!”
“I see the trees!” I shout as we careen towards them while I try to sort out the controls. I flick my eyes back and forth between the fast-approaching treetops and the joystick, which I grab with both hands, pulling it ever so slightly back to lift the nose. That works—enough to pull us out of the rolling dive and bring us around and level, away from sudden death via impalement by fir tree.
“WATCH OUT!” Miah screams, just as I see the massive cliff face looming ahead of us.
“Okay, okay!” I pull steadily back and to the right, and instead of crashing into the cliff, we arc gracefully along its face like a hawk in the wind. I exhale and scan the distance for anything else I need to avoid.
“Well that was fun,” I say finally.
“Valerian Orleán, please report, Valerian Orleán, indicate location and status.”
“We need to get out of here,” Jeremiah says.
“You think?”
“
But we may not have to rely on your expert flying skills anymore—which turned out to be a massive disappointment, by the way—because I might be able to re-activate our guidance system. Now that I’ve taken out the transmitter beacon, we should be able to set the system up again so you don’t have to fly with that damn joystick.” I breathe an enormous sigh of relief.
“What do you need?”
“Well, I have no idea if it will work, and I’m going to have to power up just to find out. If we’re lucky, I’ll just have to drop in some code. They’ll be able to see us for as long as that takes and then we’ll go dark again. You want to fly with that stick or chance it that I can pull this programming trick off?”
“Do your magic, my friend.” He taps away on the control screen and the lights flash back on as I reach up and slide the main interface panel back down. He pulls up a hologram of the ship and zooms in on the areas that are flashing red, indicating disruptions in normal functionality.
I pull up the ship’s wave sensors, trying to see what they’re pinging us with. A list of recent incoming signals with frequencies and wavelengths appears. K-Band microwave – 15 GHz. Standard drone network communication frequency. So there are drones on our tail.
“Valerian Orleán, please report, Valeri—” Jeremiah slams his fist down on the comm feed and, miraculously, it shuts off. We both stare at the glass pane for a moment in astonishment.
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Me either,” he responds.
“Look,” I call his attention back to the wave sensors. “Drones. Anywhere from fifty to a hundred kilometers away. That’s how they’re getting a signal through to screw with the interfaces.”