by Davies, WJ
That’s what Skyia loved most about her mom: she was the only other person in the world who really truly knew her. Skyia had been worried that the great amounts of time they’d been apart these last few cycles would have damaged their secret pact, would have weakened the strong foundations they’d built. But Skyia felt, more acutely than ever, that the opposite was true. The bonds between them, being forced to stretch out over incredible distances and time, came back together again doubly strong.
When they reached a dogleg in the road, Cassidy slowed the vehicle and turned off onto a small outcrop overlooking the wooded valley. She drove to the edge and parked. She turned the key and the buggy’s motor chugged to a sputtering halt. Silence enveloped them, all the more tangible for having been subjected to its very opposite, moments before.
Cassidy turned in her seat, facing her daughter. “Skyia, I haven’t exactly told you all my reasons for being away from you so much lately.”
Skyia nodded, getting used to the peaceful silence. “I know you were part of a dig, and you always said how important it was. But you never explained why.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t in a position to say anything, not before the results had been verified.” Cassidy sighed. “This is certainly the most significant discovery we’ve made since arriving on Taran.”
“That’s great mom, I’m so proud of you.” She squeezed her mom’s hand. “Everyone already thinks you’re the best anyway—”
“No Skyia, unfortunately this won’t be something that anyone will be celebrating. In fact, people will probably see me as the bearer of bad news.”
Skyia frowned, confused. She was burning with questions, but said nothing.
“There’s no easy way to tell you what’s going on, so I’ll start at the beginning.”
Cassidy rested both hands on the steering wheel, gazing off into the distance. “Remember when you were young, I told you about the dig I led as a university student? Twenty years ago when we discovered the extinction layer?”
“Of course! It’s how you became so famous. Everyone wanted to interview you because you were so smart… and obviously the prettiest girl on the team.”
Skyia’s mom flashed a winning smile, but her eyes remained sad. “Thanks, you’re too kind to your old mother. You’ve been spending too much time with MiLO, he never stops with the compliments.”
“I know, he’s so sweet, isn’t he?”
“Listen dear,” Cassidy said, hopping out of the buggy. “When we discovered the first extinction layer, we knew something had happened on Taran forty million years ago. Some catastrophic event that caused the extinction of over ninety-five percent of the lifeforms on this planet.”
First extinction layer, Skyia thought? What did she mean by that?
Skyia followed her mom to the edge of the cliff, gazing over the valley, appreciating the magnificent view.
“People came up with all kinds of reasons for what caused the extinction,” Cassidy explained. “Everything from comets and meteors, to overpopulations of oxygen-eating algae, to massive volcanic eruptions—all things we’d seen on Earth.
“But despite all the theories, no one could come up with any evidence to back up their claims. One group even proposed that there used to be a moon orbiting Taran, but it somehow got destroyed or spun out of orbit, and its disappearance led to a mass extinction.”
Skyia’s eyes lit up. “Could you imagine if we had a moon? That would be so beautiful... like Earth!”
Skyia had always been fond of Earth books. When she was a little girl, her mom told her she could read anything she wanted from the Resurrection Ark's eBook database, and MiLO was always happy to help her load the files onto her reader. She’d spent countless hours with those books, exploring the limits of her imagination, reading about the lives of people on a different world, in a different time. The idea of billions of people living on one planet, not much bigger than Taran, made her head spin. How had all those people kept themselves organized? She thought of the science fiction stories describing humanity’s forays into outer-space, to far-off worlds which they would conquer or colonize. She often imagined herself as a character in one of those books, living out some long-forgotten writer’s fantasy on the colony world of Taran, doing some of the same things those authors had predicted so long ago—
But her most cherished memories from those stories were the descriptions of Earth’s moon. For a long time, she’d felt sad looking up at their dark and empty Night sky. Sure, at times it was possible to see the blue-green Jha, or some of the other inner planets of the system, but those sightings were few and far between, not something that could be relied on to shine across the sky. How she would love to look up and see a moon reflecting brilliant light onto a darkened land, acting like a pseudo-sun, providing a measure of comfort in the depths of the Night.
“I don’t think there ever was a moon here." Cassidy shook her head. "There’s too much gravitational disturbance for it to have formed properly. It’s a wonder Taran was able to form here at all—many binary star systems are completely devoid of planetary bodies. For planets to form around one sun is easy, but if you introduce another star into the equation, things get tricky. There’s so much gravitational activity that it's usually too erratic for anything to form and stabilize. Considering this is the closest star system to Earth, and has a planet capable of supporting human life—”
“It’s a miracle, I know mom.” Skyia gazed over the valley, thankful for the green grass and forests, the white clouds overhead, the eminently breathable air. “But what does any of this have to do with what you found in Ganji?”
“Because what we found isn’t something new,” she said. “Not exactly. We’ve seen an identical situation before. The only difference is the time-scale. What we found in Ganji is much deeper under the surface, much older. Twice as old in fact—”
Cassidy disappeared behind a large boulder and came back out holding her prize: a bunch of lily of the valley, their white bell-shaped flowers jostling against delicate Jacob’s ladder stems.
Skyia crossed her arms, recognizing that her mom was deliberately delaying telling her something. “What is twice as old, what are you talking about, mom?”
Cassidy bundled the white flowers into a small sack and tossed them into the back of the buggy. She turned back to Skyia, sighing.
“About a year ago in Ganji we found… a second extinction layer. Geographical proof of another mass extinction.”
Skyia frowned. “Doesn’t this just confirm your findings from the first dig?”
“I wish. Our first dig proved something happened to the planet forty million years ago. The results that came back from what we found in Ganji... it points to a nearly identical mass extinction event which occured eighty million years ago.”
Skyia shook her head, still not grasping what her mom was trying to explain. “So there’ve been two extinctions? And no one knows what caused them?”
“It’s worse than that, I'm afraid. There was a great calamity eighty million years ago, and then another one, equally as devastating, forty million years ago.”
“Okay…”
“We know it’s a small sample size, but think about it. Something disastrous happens here every forty million years.”
Skyia connected the dots. “The last extinction was forty million years ago, which means—”
“We’re due,” her mom concluded.
Chapter 19
“Which seat are we?” Reggie asked as they moved through the train.
“Just keep moving.” Magnus grunted.
Reggie would have to get used to Magnus’s gruff attitude and stern demeanor. Barring any major incidents, the shoot was set to last half a cycle, and Magnus and Stevens would be accompanying him the entire journey.
He glanced longingly at the plush, velvet seats which lined both aisles. His joints were starting to ache, and he desperately wanted to grab a seat, put his feet up for a couple hours.
A young woman, sittin
g down with a brown purse in her lap, looked up as Reggie walked past. A glimmer of recognition passed across her face. Reggie suspected she would be scratching her head for the next few minutes trying to figure out where she had seen him before. What's wrong, you don’t recognize me with my gray hair and limp?
As he continued down the aisle, he heard her call out, "Reggie?"
He turned back to her, flourishing his hands. "That's me."
Stevens rolled his eyes and Magnus shot him an exasperated look.
"My mother adores you,” the woman gushed. “Could I please get your autograph for her? She would just die I surprised her with it.”
"Of course," he said as she handed him a notepad. Reggie appreciated his fans more than anyone and always went out of his way to appease them.
"What's her name?" he asked, taking out his antique signing pen, which he always carried with him.
"Samantha," she blushed. "But you can sign it to Sammy. That's what my dad used to call her."
Reggie scrawled his loopy signature with a little note wishing the old woman well. He smiled and handed it back to her. She kissed his bristly cheek, thanking him profusely and then he continued after Magnus.
They reached an automatic door that whisked upward as they passed into the next car. Reggie looked down the aisle, trying to guess which grouping of seats would be theirs. A chime went and a female voice came over the intercom urging all passengers to please take their seats, the train would depart in five minutes.
Reggie kept walking, the swish of his footsteps on the carpet becoming a predictable rhythm, only disturbed when he had to side step a piece of luggage or once when he had to dodge a small girl who was coming from the opposite direction. Reggie smiled at her as she passed, her mom calling from somewhere behind him. The girl had a silver butterfly pendant pinned to her dress which sparkled against the lights from above.
“Hey could you please tell me which seat is ours?” Reggie asked the men. “How much longer ‘till we can sit down?” Reggie knew he sounded as impatient as a child, but his leg was really starting to ache. His pain medication was in his pack. If he could only slow down for a moment he could grab it.
“The next car,” was all Magnus said. Stevens remained silent, scanning the faces of passengers left and right as if looking for someone.
Another chime—louder and more impatient—rang throughout the car, announcing one minute to departure.
“Please take your seats,” an attendant urged.
A playful squeal rang out behind him. Reggie turned around just in time to see a woman scoop the girl with the butterfly pin up into her arms and then carry her to their seats. Behind the happy family, Reggie spotted the man with dark glasses who had pushed past them at the train’s entrance. He stood at the entrance to the previous car, a black briefcase at his feet.
Was he looking at them?
Reggie shook his head as he ducked through the arch leading to the next car. They must have walked the interior of most of the train by now. Why hadn’t they just entered into this car in the first place?
Reggie cast a glance behind him as the door between cars swished closed. The man with dark glasses sat down on the other side of the door. He settled into his seat, but kept glancing up at people as they jostled past. Reggie felt like he caught the man’s eye again, but it was hard to tell on account of the glasses. Probably just another fan, Reggie thought. Nothing to worry about.
Arthritic, pain-ridden, and now paranoid, too? Reggie reminded himself to order a drink once they got seated.
“Dammit, did you see him?” Stevens whispered to Magnus.
Magnus nodded gravely. “We have to go.”
“Go where?” Reggie asked. “We’re nearly at the end of the train.”
The men ignored him and hurried into the next car. Reggie could see there was no sliding door on the other side, which signified this was the end of the train. He scanned the compartment for the empty seats that he knew would be theirs. The car was quite full, everyone else already seated. Reggie couldn’t see anywhere with three seats together. Not that it bothered him. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to a six hour ride sitting next to his hired guns.
When they reached the train door, Magnus grabbed Reggie’s arm and whispered gruffly, “We’re leaving.”
“What’s going on…?” Reggie protested, but Magnus’s voice had an urgent tone to it, so he complied.
“Follow us, keep your head low.”
Confused as hell, Reggie followed the two men down the steps to the platform and they exited the train. Because they’d walked through the entire length of the train, they were now standing on the far end of the tracks.
“Can one of you please tell me what the hell is going on?” Reggie asked, glaring at both men.
“Wait.” Magnus simply turned his head toward the doors, which were now closing.
A low hum emanated from deep within the train and it rose up a few meters, hovering. A final chime sounded throughout the station, and a voice warned other passengers to step away from the tracks. The train inched forward, slowly at first, but it quickly gained speed.
Through the passing window, Reggie imagined that he saw the man with the dark glasses stand up in his seat, waving his arms and shouting.
I’ll need to get more sleep, Reggie thought.
“Hey Reggie, sorry for the inconvenience,” Magnus said. “Due to… security reasons, we were unable to continue our intended route on that train.
“You realize we have a schedule to adhere to, right?” he asked.
Magnus frowned. “Trust me, you don’t want to be on that train right now.”
“Why not?” Reggie asked, looking longingly at the train as it peeled out of the station, thinking of those cushy velvet seats and the drink he would have ordered.
Magnus held up a hand to his ear.
“What are you—“
A tremendous boom erupted out of nowhere.
A shock wave toppled Reggie to the ground.
“What the hell was that!” he shouted.
Another flash and the train blossomed into a speeding fireball. Its electromagnetism failed and the massive vehicle thudded onto the tracks with a screeching roar.
Reggie squinted his eyes against the blinding sparks.
The front car grinded along the tracks and then skipped off, peeling over the edge and down into the city streets below. The other cars followed, a fiery herd of lemmings tumbling after their leader, plunging over a cliff.
A second explosion rocked the falling cars to pieces. Twisted metal and molten ash flew through the air, shattering windows in the station. People screamed and ran for their lives.
The last car dropped off the track and came to rest on the street. A sickening silence replaced the screaming as people gaped at the destroyed wreck of the train—a great metallic beast reduced to a pile of flaming rubble.
• Departures •
Chapter 20
Reggie pushed himself to his feet, tempered rage overtaking utter shock.
He marched up to Magnus, fire in his eyes. “You knew,” he accused. “You knew the train would explode, that’s why we got off. Why the hell didn’t you say anything? We could have saved all those people.”
“No, we couldn’t have,” Magnus said calmly, brushing ashes off his black vest. “The train was leaving in less than a minute. If we had called out, the bomber would have detonated while we were still in the station, killing everyone, including us.”
Reggie narrowed his eyes. “What bomber?”
“That man you saw, with the dark glasses. Stevens recognized him from a list of known terrorists we received this morning.”
Reggie watched helplessly as flames engulfed the wreckage. He thought of that little girl, her butterfly pin melting in a pool of liquid silver and dripping through the carnage. All those other passengers…
“Who would do this?” Reggie asked through clenched teeth.
“The Children of Two Suns,” Magnus s
aid. “After everything that happened with the Capitol Trust building yesterday, our bureau sent us a list of active agents working for their… organization. Thank god we looked over the dossier before picking you up.”
“What grudge could they possibly have with a train full of innocent people?” Reggie couldn’t fathom why anyone would commit such a heinous act.
Stevens answered him. “When the disruptions got more severe and frequent, the COTS started bombing the hell out of trains, government buildings, hospitals… mostly in the outer cities to start, so the Council was able to keep a lid on things, make sure nobody knew about it.” Stevens raised a hand to his face, adjusting his shades. “See, the Council doesn’t want to justify the attacks by broadcasting them to the world. That’s exactly what those crazy COTS bastards want—to send a message.”
Reggie’s eyes kept drifting back to the crash. Sirens wailed as the first emergency crews approached the grisly scene.
“People are going to know about it now,” Reggie said darkly, lowering his head. “The heart of Alexendia bleeds today.”
“And the colony bleeds with it,” Stevens and Magnus said in unison.
Stevens keyed something into the communication band clasped around his wrist, fingers dancing over the small pad.
Squealing sirens announced the arrival of the Planetary Guard to the scene. They quickly made way for firefighters, who had arrived on their heels. Reggie watched them bravely quench fires and pick through the carnage, calling for survivors all the while.
After a moment Reggie spoke, burning with questions. “I can’t understand why they’re doing this. They’re a damned environmental group, aren’t they?”
“They’re dangerous extremists.” Magnus corrected him. “They believe the orbital disruptions are caused by humanity’s presence here.”