Krys took off at a run, sneering at the growing stench as he ran ahead. He slowed when he began to make out shapes ahead of him beyond the swath that had been cleared in the forest. His heart jumped when he saw something moving. It was a person walking near the outskirts of the village. He grinned and started to jog forward until the thought came to him that maybe it wasn’t one of his people.
Distracted by the thought, Krys tripped on a fallen branch and crashed into a bush that had been flattened by the army. He rolled away from it, picking the twigs and leaves off his arms and shirt, and sat up. Closer to the ground, he had the cover of the crushed forest to hide him. Krys watched, trying to figure out if the person he’d seen was a friend or an enemy.
Seconds turned to minutes without the distant figures giving away their identity. He brushed his finger across his lips and went to run it along his teeth when he tasted the dirt caked to his fingers. Krys spat it out and looked at his hands. He hadn’t chewed his fingernails in years; he’d finally kicked the habit. He scowled and rubbed his hands against his shirt, transferring dirt from one to the other. It was anybody’s guess which ended up cleaner.
Krys climbed to his feet and then froze. If he could see the people in the village, then they could see him too! He ducked down into a crouch and glanced around. The people he saw didn’t act like they’d seen him. He frowned and wondered if it was safe after all. Maybe the army had just passed by?
He looked to his left and saw the tree line where the army’s devastation had left off. That would give him more cover. That was what Brak Taggart would do, one of his favorite movie heroes. He nodded, proud of himself for thinking of the idea. Now he just had to get to the tree line without being seen.
Staying low and crawling across the bare patches of torn-up dirt, he made his way across the ground without hearing anybody coming. He paused to rest and check on the village several times. Crawling through a ripped apart forest was hard work! The good news was he didn’t see anyone coming his way.
He made it to the trees that were still standing and paused to rest again. He continued to watch the village and then jerked when he felt the ground tremble. Krys twisted and looked around just as he felt another tremor. He heard the sound of heavy footsteps coming from his village a moment later. He turned in time to see one of the robots walk across the opening of the forest. The robot stopped and turned, facing his direction.
“Oh crap,” Krys muttered. He stood behind the tree, paralyzed, and saw another robot come to a stop near the first. Several vehicles, tanks, and other large boxy vehicles with tracks instead of wheels that reminded him of their crop transports, gathered near them. “They’re not after me,” Krys realized.
He ducked deeper in to the forest and found a spot where he could still see between the bushes. In a few minutes, the robot started forward and then the vehicles moved out behind it. He waited as they crossed over the trampled forest and passed him without so much as a glance in his direction. First the robot, and then the tanks and transports. He lost count after twenty of the mixed vehicles. Not because he couldn’t count higher, but because he was distracted by the robot that brought up the rear of the convoy.
The robot was painted the same, in a mottled green and brown pattern, but it looked bigger and different than the first one. Each hand had a gun mounted to its forearm and over its shoulders large cannons were pointing forward. It was like something out of one of his shows, except this was real. Real and scary.
Krys waited until the convoy passed by and was nothing more than a blurry vision to the north. His stomach rumbled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten in hours. He felt worn-out and tired too. He shook the thoughts away. Venus was a man-made world, for all intents and purposes, and there wasn’t anything dangerous to worry about except other people. Except now it seemed like there was a lot more other people here.
Krys caught himself before he tried to chew on his fingernails again and clenched his fist. He wasn’t a baby; he didn’t do that anymore! He turned and started walking towards the village again, sticking to the trees even though it was slower going than the now twice cleared road the army had made.
Krys glanced at his watch and saw that it was nearing his bedtime. Not that he was still a kid who needed a bedtime, but he tried to be in bed and asleep near the end of second rot. With a Venerian day lasting so long, they went with the Earth standard of a twenty-four-hour day. They split it into three periods: first, second, and third rots. Rot was short for rotation. Krys’s dad worked and his mom taught at the school during first rot. That left second rot for personal time and third rot for sleeping.
For him, at least. Other families were on different rots. Almost all of the kids shared his schedule, though; it made it easier on the teachers or something.
Krys was pulled out of his thoughts of his normal day when he started to see his colony through the edge of the forest. He’d gotten used to the smoke but now he was stunned again by what he saw. Buildings and machines were broken and destroyed. Smoke still rose from a few, but mostly they lay destroyed. He saw a few soldiers moving about, but mostly it seemed silent and empty. Abandoned. Dead.
Krys swallowed hard. Were his parents gone? Had they been—he shook his head. No, they couldn’t be. They hadn’t done anything wrong! His dad was smart; he’d keep them safe. At worst they’d be captured. He nodded. He had to find them. The army wouldn’t destroy everything, would they?
He pushed through the brush until he reached the creek where the horrible day had started. Krys turned his head to the left and right and picked out landmarks of where he’d played with his friends his entire life. To the right, he could make out the bend where he and Devon had been hiding. Only a few meters beyond the edge of where the forest had been razed was where Pita had stood. He wondered if she’d been flattened by the army as easily as the forest was.
Krys shook his head and climbed down the bank and crossed over the stream. He paused and stuck his hands in the cool water, rubbing them to clean them and then bringing some water to his lips. He tasted the same water he’d drank from a thousand times before and, for a few peaceful seconds, didn’t think about what was going on. He ran out of water in his hands and was forced to stand up and look around.
Everything had changed. His village was in shambles and the forest where he’d built a lifetime of memories had been ripped into pieces. He sniffed and blinked, forcing back the tears. He took a deep breath like he’d seen his dad do every time he had a new job to do and turned to climb up the far bank. He had to find his family. And Lily’s too. They needed to know what he’d seen. Even if it was the worst news he could imagine, they deserved to know.
Chapter 7
Krys waited long enough that he’d gotten an idea of how people were moving. He hadn’t spotted anyone from the village yet, just soldiers and other people wearing blue and white uniforms. The people in blue and white weren’t soldiers, or at least they didn’t carry any guns. They looked different, too. More normal.
The soldiers weren’t doing much, just wandering around and talking to one another. The people in uniforms were picking through the wreckage and cleaning up. Krys watched them come and go and wondered how he was ever going to find anything. There were too many of them wandering about and it was too bright out.
Krys turned his attention to the power cells that were fed by the energy channeled down from the solar shield. The tower of power, as they called it, was still standing. It stretched over twenty meters into the sky. His dad worked on that, too, sometimes, but since there weren’t any moving parts, it didn’t break down very often. The power cells would last a hundred years each, and there was something like two hundred of them buried beneath the colony. It was enough to keep them at full power through an entire night and have plenty of energy to spare.
Krys stared up, following where he imagined the invisible energy beam was to the sky above. The sun was blotted out by the solar shield in orbit, but enough light was still allowed through to cause
a shimmering circle in the sky. Lily used to stare at it and talk about how pretty it was, especially when it rained and it caused rainbows all over the place. Krys had never paid much attention to that; his head was on more practical things like what game they would play next or any troubles he was having at school. Lily was enough of a dreamer for both of them.
Except Lily was gone. Losing her left him without any dreams, either of her or for himself.
Krys’s stomach cramped, pinching as he watched men and women picking through the remains of Grunnar Stevens house. Mr. Stevens had been on the village council as the paymaster. He kept track of the crop yield and who got paid what. Krys had hardly ever spoken to him, but his dad said he was a little shy in the social department, but fair and understanding when it came down to it. Whatever that meant. Now he was just another missing person with a house that had a corner smashed in, exposing it to the outside.
Krys turned away and looked to the east. The haze of smoke that hung over the village was missing, or not as thick. His stomach twisted as he considered starting there. Kilometer after kilometer of fruit trees and hardy vineyards that could stand up to the abundant sunlight and equally long winters. Krys nodded. He needed to eat something first, and then he could worry about looking for his family and friends.
He climbed back down into the creek bed and followed it to the east, pausing every so often to check and make sure there was no one nearby. After he’d walked well beyond the easternmost edge of the colony, he climbed out and made his way into the stands of mango trees. He wandered through them, staring up and wondering how he could get one down. The leaves were a good twenty-five to thirty meters off the ground.
Krys turned his attention to the ground and started searching for fallen fruit. It was rare that one fell and rarer still that it wasn’t collected to be composted. Still, he had to look. That or try to steal one of the highpicker machines that went from tree to tree and harvest the fruit. The odds were good there were some out and about if he could find a field with ripe fruit in it.
Krys wandered through the fields until he heard a noise. He froze and turned until he saw two people wearing white and blue uniforms walking through the fields. He dropped to his belly and crawled over behind the trunk of a mango tree so he could watch them.
“There’s something over there!” one of them, a woman, cried out.
Krys’s heart leapt into his throat. He risked a quick look and saw the speaker was pointing away from him. He followed her hand and saw what she’d seen: a crop transporter sitting on a roadway between fields. Resting on top of it was one of the highpickers. It was exactly what he needed, but they’d seen it first.
They started walking towards it, leaving Krys lying on the ground and wondering what to do. He could keep looking: there were bound to be other transporters and picking machines that had been sent out before the soldiers came. But what if other people were looking for them, just like these two were?
Krys watched them as they reached the transporter. The smaller of the two, the woman who had spoken loud enough for him to hear, said something to her partner before she turned and kept walking farther into the fields. Krys watched her go and frowned, and then he nodded to himself. He would follow her. Maybe she’d find another one, or if not that, maybe he could at least learn something about her.
He climbed to his feet and moved from tree to tree, moving as quiet as he could until the worker climbed into the cab of the transport and started it up. Krys paused to watch it head back to town and then turned towards the woman. He’d lost sight of her, but he knew the direction she’d gone in. He just had to catch up.
Krys jogged through the rows of mango trees and noticed how she was cutting across the field. It made sense; that way she could intercept another road and look for more of the deployed transporters. What he hadn’t counted on was running into the end of the mango fields and stepping into fields filled with orange trees.
Krys gulped and looked around. The orange trees were shorter. He could see under most of them, but not all. Smaller trees also meant they were put closer together, which made seeing anything almost impossible beyond a couple dozen meters. He frowned and considered swearing before he realized the oranges were just turning ripe and were within arm’s reach.
He put the woman out of his mind as he plucked the first orange and stuck his thumb into the skin to peel it away. Juice ran down his hand and, a few seconds later, his chin. He grinned at the sweet citrus taste and slurped the pulp between his teeth. The taste of a fresh orange was even more liberating than drinking from the stream had been.
He swatted lazily at a honeybee that buzzed too close to him and turned, reaching for a second orange. He stopped when he saw the woman standing there and staring at him. She looked impeccable in her blue and white shirt and blue pants. Black boots completed the outfit on the bottom and almost matched her dark brown hair that she wore just above her collar.
He stared at her, not knowing what to say. Her eyes narrowed and she craned her head to look around. No doubt for reinforcements. She opened her mouth and started to draw in a large breath.
“Wait!” Krys hissed at her. “Please! I don’t—”
Krys heard a sharp crack, like a tree branch snapping in the forest, and then saw the woman stumble forward. She fell face first on the ground and didn’t move. Krys took a step towards her, confused by the sudden fall. What had happened to her? And what was that noise? Did she break something?
He stopped when he saw the light glisten off the back of her head. It wasn’t all dark and shiny hair back there; there was blood, too.
Krys looked around and saw more figures moving through the orange grove. Three of them, and they were hurrying. He turned and stared behind him, wondering if he’d walked into a trap. He turned back, realizing they weren’t wearing either the soldier’s camouflage or the blue and white of the workers.
“Krys? Stars above, boy, is that really you?”
“Mr. Strain?” Krys breathed when he recognized the voice of Lily’s father.
Mig Strain crashed into him and swept him up in a hug that threatened to crush his chest and back. He felt something wet on his cheek and neck before the ground was under his feet again. He stared up and saw the tears on Mr. Strain’s cheeks before he noticed the gun slung across his back.
“You’ve got a gun,” Krys noticed.
Mig ignored him. “Krys, are you alone? Is there anyone else out there?”
“Anyone else? What? No. Um, sir, about Lily, she—”
Mr. Strain reached out and put his hand on Krys’s shoulder, stopping him. “I know, son; she’s been taken.”
“Taken?” Krys asked. “But I saw her in the forest—”
“They rounded up what children they could,” Mig said. “Sent them off for reeducation. Shot those of us who hadn’t got away already. You were in the forest? Good for you!”
“What? Sir? Reeducation? I don’t understand. What about my parents? Are they—did they—”
Mr. Strain guided Krys to walk beside him as he turned. “Come on, son. We’ve got a long walk and a longer talk ahead of us.”
“Sir?”
Mig sighed. “Krys, I hate to tell you this, but your folks are gone.”
Krys stumbled and, with Mr. Strain’s help, managed to catch himself. They were gone? He looked up and saw the fresh tears in the man’s eyes. Gone didn’t mean they’d left him behind. Gone meant they were dead. He swallowed and turned his head to stare at the ground. Mr. Strain guided him as they walked, telling him about the invasion as though Krys stood a chance of remembering a single thing the man said.
Chapter 8
“Lily, wait up!”
Lily stopped in the hallway outside of the classroom and clutched her pad to her chest. She glanced up and saw two other kids in her class hurry to catch up to her, as well as an older girl who had spoken to her. They stopped and glanced around. “Hey,” the older girl greeted her with a smile. “Welcome to TLS-1.”
She’d learned a few useful things too, like her home for the next several years would be a space station called TLS-1. TLS, the Learning Station, was a failed attempt ages ago by Earthlings to create a habitat in space. It was perfectly habitable; the problem was the lack of organization and structure in the people who tried to run it. The new government, voted into place as an emergency measure to protect humanity from destroying itself, had repurposed it. And now it was her home for the foreseeable future.
“I’m Palla,” the older girl said and thrust her hand forward. “This is Trix and that’s Kami.”
“I’m Lily,” she said and then blushed. They already knew that thanks to their teacher introducing her to the class. “Sorry, you knew that.”
Trix smiled and glanced at a nearby window that showed a slowly rotating view of the stars. “It’s okay. Are you from Venus too?”
Lily gasped. “Yes! You?”
“Me too,” Kami said while Trix nodded. “Colony Delta-22. You?”
“Sierra-12,” Lily answered. She gasped a moment later as she did the math. “You were on the dark side!”
Kami nodded. “Only had a couple of veeks left until spring, though. Not that it matters anymore, unless they send me back there.”
“Send you back?”
Palla nodded. “We’re all here to learn the truth of what’s been going on. I’ve been here a few months already and they say my aptitude is for speaking and leadership. So here I am, in charge of helping you girls adjust.”
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