Transcendent (9781311909442)

by Halstead, Jason

  “Are you sure you can do this?”

  Krys stared up at the man he’d come to respect and love and nodded. “I seen my dad do it enough and he showed me some things. Besides, getting the locator out is the easy part!”

  “As long as they can’t track us,” Mig said. He looked at the four people gathered around him: Krys, Angelo, Kerry, and Kerry’s wife Stef. “All right, let’s do it. Krys will come up from behind to grab the picker after the three of you come in from around them. I’ll cover with my rifle in case they try anything. You’ve got three minutes to get in position. We go whether you’re ready or not. So be ready.”

  Nods, grunts, and thumbs-up were his responses. Krys watched them go and then turned to head for his spot.

  “Krys!” Mr. Strain hissed. “Be careful!”

  Krys nodded. He wanted to smile but his stomach was twisted up. So far they’d stolen fruit and even managed to capture one small vison and butcher it. This time they were trying to get their own highpicker. Then they could grab food more easily, without risking discovery and capture. The tricky part came in the reprogramming Krys needed to do. He was counting on being able to salvage some power cells to make one of the two infopads they had work.

  “Best get going. Not much time left,” Mig said.

  Krys turned and hurried through the vineyard they’d come through towards the edge of the field. They’d practiced this maneuver a few times on empty fields away from the crops. This time it was different. Not only would the crops slow them down but they had to worry about being seen now.

  Krys hadn’t done it himself yet, but Mr. Strain and Kerry had both ventured close enough to their old village to scout it out. It had been rebuilt. More than just rebuilt: people were living there. And not only people, but a squad of soldiers too. The robot was gone but it had been replaced with two tanks. Small tanks designed for speed and scouting, not heavy battle tanks.

  Krys checked his watch and wondered how long until it would run out of power too. They were only a veek away from fall, which meant a little over three veeks from their first sunset in the wilderness. They’d been trying to store up what food they could, even drying out the vison they’d killed to store the meat, but it wouldn’t be enough to last a hundred seventeen days of darkness.

  They needed clothing, too. Everything they had was worn, dirty, and starting to fall apart. The resistance had started out as terrifying, exciting, and even a little fun. Now, as the days turned into veeks and the summer slipped behind them, Krys realized he’d been kept busy. It had been useful training, but it had also kept him from dwelling on his family and friends.

  He checked his watch again and scowled. He was late. Only six seconds, but their timing had to be dead-on. He slipped around the edge of the grapevine and ran across the dirt road and into the coconut grove.

  Krys counted off seconds in his head, running hard to try to catch up. He slowed after sprinting for half a minute and caught some of his breath back. He saw other figures running through the trees towards the transporter ahead. His new friends and family, the other survivors.

  The worker in his blue and white uniform looked up, either hearing or sensing something. He saw Angelo bearing down on him, the large bear of a man pumping his arms and looking like he was leading a charge of stampeding cattle. He turned away and leapt towards the cab of the transporter. Instead of reaching the open-sided cab, he found himself face to face with Stef.

  Krys passed beyond the back of the transporter and lost sight of Stef right as she swung her fist towards the man. Krys wanted to look and see if she needed help, but his job was to grab the highpicker. He leapt up onto the back of the transporter and climbed over the walls of the bins to the landing apparatus on top of it. There was a scuffle going on below but he focused on his job and only his job.

  “Krys! Relax, we got him!”

  Krys was working hard at removing the manual clasps on the picker and had to be told a second time before he realized what was being said. He lifted his head and looked around the transporter. The worker was lying face down on the ground. He wasn’t moving.

  Krys gulped. “Is he dead?”

  “No,” Kerry grunted. He grinned at his wife and added, “Might wish he was with the shiner Stef gave him, though!”

  Krys stared at the fallen man a long moment and then shook his head. “Grab anything you can!” he said.

  “Need any help with that picker?” Angelo asked.

  Krys turned to look at it and then looked back down at the transporter. “Get me the control deck!”

  Angelo grunted and climbed into the open cab. Krys turned back to the picker and frowned. With two of the four clamps manually released, it wouldn’t release automatically. He went back to work on the other two and, without the fear of discovery, he had the presence of mind to focus and get them released.

  Krys tipped the quad fan machine up and reached for the access patch on the bottom. He pulled the carbon shim out from his worn pants and fumbled twice before he seated it against the five-pointed screw head. He had to angle it to get enough contact and torque as he twisted it. His makeshift screwdriver twisted free.

  “Krys! You need this?” Angelo called up.

  Krys glanced down and saw the control pad for the picker. His eyes widened. “Not yet. Take it. I need the tools. Check the maintenance hatch behind the seat.”

  Angelo turned and growled at Stef to get out of the cab. She hopped down without a word but offered him a gesture that spoke volumes. Kerry and Angelo both chuckled. Krys frowned. “Hurry up!”

  “Relax,” Kerry said. “This guy’s down for the count!”

  “For the what?”

  Kerry sighed. “It’s an old saying. Means he’s not waking up any time soon.”

  “That doesn’t mean a patrol won’t come by!”

  Kerry shrugged Krys’s warning off and turned back to watch Angelo. He glanced at Krys and then the sleeping worker.

  “Need the whole thing?” Angelo asked as he yanked out a satchel full of tools.

  “Just a star bit driver,” Krys said. “Looks like a four-millimeter.”

  Angelo stared into the bag and snorted. He closed it and stepped up on the access ladder. He hoisted it up and set it on the edge of the open topped front bin. Krys had to balance the picker and scramble around the machine to get to the satchel. He yanked it open and fished around until he found the tool he needed. He grinned when he pulled out a powered driver.

  Less than a minute later, he had the hatch open and used a chip puller to remove the tiny locator chip plugged into the picker’s circuit board. He tucked it into his pocket and secured the hatch. “I’m good!”

  “Should we take the transporter too?” Kerry asked.

  Krys stared at it and started to grin. “That’s a great idea!”

  “No,” Angelo said. “Too big. Can’t move it and hide it. Plus they can track it.”

  “I can pull the locator chip!” Krys protested.

  “Don’t matter—that much metal, they’ll spot it from space.”

  Krys wanted to argue but he saw Kerry and Stef both nodding in agreement with the large man. He pressed his lips together and turned away. His eyes fell on the top of the bins again and then widened. “There’s a bunch of coconuts in here!”

  Angelo grinned. “Those we can take!”

  “Front bin’s full,” Krys said. “I’ll carry the picker if—”

  Angelo snorted. “I’ll get the flitter; you grab some nuts.”

  Kerry and Stef burst out laughing while Krys blushed at the thought of grabbing his nuts. He grinned in spite of his red cheeks. “It’s ready; come get it.”

  “Anything else we can salvage?” Stef asked. “We got a spare power cell, tools, the control pad, the picker, and some nuts.”

  “I’d love to tear the transporter down for parts, but we don’t have time.”

  Kerry frowned and glanced around but the others nodded in agreement with Krys. “All right,” Stef said. “L
et’s go. Mig’s waiting for us.”

  Krys tossed down several coconuts to the others before he grabbed the satchel and climbed down. “Good job, Krys,” Stef said with a smile as he gathered up some coconuts.

  Krys smiled back and turned to look at a transporter. He noticed a crack near the front wheel well and froze. He’d cracked that transporter by running it into another one when he helped his dad do maintenance on them last winter.

  “Krys? You okay?” Stef asked.

  He shook his head and nodded. “Yeah, sorry. I just—never mind, it’s nothing.”

  “What is it?”

  He blinked the tears out of his eyes and coughed. “Let’s go.”

  “Krys?”

  He turned and shook his head. “Let’s go. We’ve got to be gone before they can follow us.”

  She stared at him for a few more seconds before nodding. She turned to the others and said in a clear voice, “Come on, boys. Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter 14

  “We should have brought him back with us,” Krys muttered. “We don’t know anything about what’s going on!”

  “No good,” Mr. Strain said with a shake of his head. “We might learn some things, but so would he. And then what, we kill him so he doesn’t report back?”

  Krys felt a chill run down his back. “Kill him? No! I mean, um—”

  “Why not?” Janna asked. She was another farmer who managed to escape and join up with them. When everyone turned to look at her, she shrugged. “They killed us without thinking twice.”

  “They didn’t,” Mig argued. “The soldiers did. I got no problem with fighting them and doing what needs to be done; it’s fighting civilians that don’t sit right with me.”

  “Doesn’t,” Krys said without thinking about it. “It doesn’t feel right to me either.”

  Mig raised an eyebrow at Krys’s correction and then smirked. Janna looked at Angelo just as he looked away. “Killing civilians didn’t bother them any.”

  “Let’s change this up,” Mig said. He looked at all of them before asking, “What do we not know that we need to?”

  “How we’re going to survive the winter,” Stef offered.

  Mig winced and then chuckled. “Well sure, but I meant that the people living in our town could tell us?”

  They glanced back and forth at one another, looking for someone to speak. Krys considered the question and realized that there were a lot of things he’d like to know, but nothing that was necessary for his survival. He frowned and glanced up at the sky and picked out the faint twinkle of stars near the western horizon. That was where Lily was. And anyone else who had been taken away. Somewhere up there. Safe, or so he imagined.

  “They can’t tell us that,” Mig said, startling Krys. “I have no idea why they took them. Reeducation? Or brainwashing? Maybe just slave labor. It don’t make sense, killing all of us off and only taking the kids in the right ages that they could get.”

  Krys nodded. “I’d been wondering that. Where did they come from? Earth? Mars? Some of the orbiting habitats?”

  Mig rubbed his chin as he considered it. “That’s a lot of hardware. Too much for a habitat, I think. There’s what, fifty some ag colonies here? All those ships alone, let alone the tanks and bots. Maybe Mars, but does that make sense? I mean, they’d need Earth, right? Earth is between us and Mars.”

  Krys frowned and glanced at the powered down infopads sitting under his lean-to that protected them from the occasional shower. If he hooked one up to a power cell, he could find out where Earth, Mars, and Venus were at in their orbits, but he wasn’t sure it was worth the effort or the waste of power.

  “Hard to know,” Kerry said. “I don’t think any of us has any idea where the planets were when they showed up. I don’t even know how long it takes to get from Mars to here. The trip from Earth took me and Stef almost three months. I remember hearing somebody say going to Mars instead was only a couple weeks longer.”

  “As long as the planets are lined up and you take advantage of momentum,” Krys added.

  The adults glanced at him and then away. “Good point,” Mig admitted. “All that astrophysics or astronomy or whatever it is confuses me.”

  “It’s all about speed and distance,” Krys offered. He opened his mouth and froze as another idea came to him. “Hey! I know what to do!”

  “What to do? About what?”

  “About us and winter,” Krys said. “Venus has sunlight for one hundred and seventeen Earth days, depending on how close to the equator we are. Then the same amount of time spent in the dark. It doesn’t get too bad out, but we usually see some snow halfway through the night cycles.”

  “Right, and we don’t have the clothes for it,” Janna grumbled.

  “We move. Be nomads,” Krys explained. The stunned and confused looks he received prompted him to continue. “At the equator, Venus rotates around thirteen and a half kilometers an hour. That’s a hard pace to keep for very long on foot, but if we head east we can prolong our daylight until we can’t beat the sunset. Then we turn and head back, cutting the night in half.”

  Angelo was the first to speak up. “None of us have been to any other colonies. Where do we go? Where do we get food?”

  Krys turned to the pads. “We have maps. There are mountain ranges that might slow us down but there are roads through them. It’s going to be hard, yes, but can we survive even a single night cycle? One hundred seventeen days where it gets colder and colder. Snow will come. The trees won’t bear fruit. If we kill many vison, they’ll know we’re here and come after us.”

  “They know we’re here now,” Mig pointed out. “After that stunt we pulled with the highpicker.”

  “Right! And we can use it at other colonies we find to gather food.”

  “You’re talking about being on the move all the time,” Janna said. “That’s no way to live!”

  “And this is?” Stef asked her. “Look around, Janna. There’s six of us here and two more keeping watch. If we don’t do anything, we’re going to die. Then everyone we loved will have died for nothing!”

  Krys glanced at Mr. Strain and saw him staring back. They shared a secret hope for Lily, at least. It bound them together but didn’t make the approaching night any warmer.

  “If we’re always on the move, will we have time to gather food?” Kerry asked. “If we’re more active, we’ll need more to eat too.”

  Mig cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention. “It’s late and Krys brought up a good idea. I don’t know if it’s the right idea, but it’s a good one. Odds are we’re not the only survivors, too. There’s bound to be other bands of refugees out there. Maybe we can team up with them. Pool our resources. Gather enough strength to fight back.”

  “Fight back? Against tanks and robots and soldiers?” Janna snapped.

  Mig nodded. “An army’s only as strong as the fear it puts in the people standing against them.”

  “Guns help,” Janna quipped.

  “They help make us afraid,” Mig corrected. “But with enough people, they can’t shoot us all. If they did, they’d have no one left.”

  Krys lifted his head and stared at Mr. Strain with a newfound respect. It made perfect sense. Convince people to stand up and eventually even the people holding the guns would have to realize they were in the wrong. Wouldn’t they?

  “Get some rest and think about it, that’s all I’m asking,” Mig finished. “Come up with new ideas if you can, but if not, we’ve got to make our minds up quick or we’re going to have to settle in for a long and cold night.”

  Chapter 15

  Lily stopped on her way back to her quarters by the small classroom that Palla had gotten assigned to them as a study area. She wasn’t ready to be alone yet in her quarters and she figured if there was anyone she could talk to, it would be Trix or Kami. She didn’t know if she should tell them about Krys; she didn’t want to upset them if they’d lost anybody. Even though she was aching to at least talk about h
im.

  She found Kami going over an infopad with Palla beside her. Both looked up as she entered. Kami dropped her eyes back down almost as quickly. Palla’s lips curled up in a smile that was part smirk and part sneer. “Was the attention shifting? Did you need a new way to stand out?”

  Lily felt the words hit like a slap to her cheek. “I didn’t ask to—”

  “What sort of punishment do they hand out for that sort of rude behavior?” Palla asked. “I’ve always wondered.”

  “Punishment?” Lily’s eyes widened. Palla had no idea about President Ondalla! “Oh, that? Sorry. Well, I’m not going back to that class.”

  Palla shook her head and sighed. “All that potential and your mouth ruined it. You need a serious lesson in serving your fellow man!”

  Kami lifted her head back up. “What are you going to do?” she asked in a timid voice.

  For Kami’s sake, Lily tried not to sound too smug when she said, “Coordinator Sykes is moving me into classes with the sixteen-year-olds.”

  Palla’s lips fell open and a few choked sounds emerged.

  Lily drove the nail home. “I guess it was President Ondalla’s idea. He told me to work hard and challenge myself—everybody was going to be watching.”

  Kami shook her head and glanced back down at her pad. Palla managed to close her mouth but her nostrils flared twice as she breathed through them. Finally she managed to ask, “The president sent you a communication? Personally?”

  Lily shook her head. “No.”

  Palla’s shoulders dropped as she released some of the tension in her back.

  “He told me in person.”

  Kami jerked her head up again and Palla resumed her imitation of a fish out of water gasping for breath.

  The door opened behind Lily to admit Trix. “Did you guys hear the rumor about the new president being here? Do you think—what’s wrong?”

  Lily turned to face the other Venerian girl and offered her a weak smile. “I met him a few minutes ago.”

  “You met—no way! That’s so—so—I don’t even know. I mean, it’s cool and all, but this is the guy who sent an army to take over Venus. He killed almost everyone we know, right?”