Fall and Rising

by Sunny Moraine

  Lochlan shrugged. “Might as well. You could be right, and even if you’re not, it’s something to keep us from going in circles.”

  Aarons looked back the way they had come, and Adam followed his gaze. The crash was only the faintest speck nestled in the gray hills. It was now too late to turn back. “Fine,” Aarons said. “It’s true, might as well.”

  The bank of the river was mostly dry, hard, and cracked, as if there were periods when the river swelled and expanded. Again Adam thought of the storms in the distance. Rain meant floods, and that could be another danger; floods in the desert usually came on hard and fast with little warning. He remembered on Kolyma when an unusually strong storm had caused a flash flood that had washed away the homes of many trithosite miners. Thirty people had died, their bodies never recovered. They were buried somewhere in layers of mud.

  The land continued much as it had, flat and then rolling up into foothills, but as the sun sank toward the horizon, the mountain range fell away, and the ground began to descend into a series of rocky crags and low cliffs. These were newer, and looked as if they had been carved by flood and rain, some of the cliff edges leaning precariously forward.

  “Getting dark.” Aarons stopped and glanced up at the deepening purple sky. “We should—”

  Screams from overhead. Engines, ships in the distance and speeding toward them. They were low, drifting back and forth in what Adam recognized—with cold fear—as a search pattern.

  “Khara,” Lochlan hissed, and lunged toward one of the cliffs. “C’mon!”

  The cliff they were making toward had a shallow depression, a hollow that wasn’t quite a cave, and when they reached it they pressed themselves into it, their bodies hunched. Adam pushed himself against Lochlan’s side, a hand on his chest, feeling the racing beat of his heart. The three of them scanned the part of the sky they could see, and as far as Adam could tell, none of them were breathing at all.

  “If they have infrared,” Adam whispered, and winced when Aarons slammed a fist into his arm.

  “Shut up, Yuga. Or I do it for you.”

  Adam obeyed. If the ships had infrared and scanned at the right angle, they would be spotted. But if their uncanny luck didn’t leave them …

  He had no idea how long it took. But at last the buzz of the engines faded. Then they could see them, flying in formation toward the setting sun. Together, the three let out a long breath.

  “They might be back.” Aarons crept to the edge of the hollow, peering out. “We need to stay here and hope for the best. In the morning we can move again.”

  The chill bled further into the air, and gradually sharpened. A fire was risky, but the oncoming cold was riskier. With the last of the daylight, Lochlan and Adam left the hollow and searched along the bank and near the cliffs for anything that might burn. There were a few more clumps of grasses, a couple of stunted plants with woody stems, but not much else was in evidence. Lochlan stopped and straightened up, looking toward the horizon and the rim of the sun that remained, golden orange and glaring.

  “This is fucked,” he said flatly.

  Adam walked up beside him, his hands full of grass. “I know.”

  “I mean …” Lochlan turned to him, and though his face was cast in shadow, unhappy tension gripped every line and angle, augmented by the ugly cuts the crash had given him. “Aarons. You trust him? Seriously? He was trying to kill you.”

  “I don’t think he’s trying now.” Adam sighed. He knew a fight over this was probably brewing, but he had been hoping with all his heart to avoid it. “They already had us imprisoned. What would be the point in pretending to let us go? And getting his own people killed in the process? Hell, killing them himself. Why would he do that, Lock?”

  “I don’t know.” Lochlan gripped one of his own dreadlocks and pulled. “It’s … You can’t expect me to trust one of them. You just can’t.”

  “I’m not. But I used to be one of them. Did you forget that? Maybe you’ve been trying to. When we first met, I thought you hated me.” Adam’s mouth twisted. “Maybe you did.”

  “Adam.” Lochlan’s shoulders slumped. “I never hated you. You know that.”

  “Yeah, well. Could’ve fooled me.”

  Lochlan stared at him incredulously. “Are you trying to pick a fight with me?”

  “No, Lock, I’m not.” Adam dropped the grasses in a heap and stalked toward the edge of the water. It was lapping the mud of the shore. He was angry now, but it was a dull anger, one without fire or force. It didn’t even have much in the way of direction. He had long ago made his peace with Lochlan’s initial dislike for him; it didn’t matter now, because what was between them had outgrown any ill feeling that might have existed before.

  But it wasn’t even about that. It went deeper.

  “I could tell you hated us,” he said softly. “Maybe not me specifically, but … When you told me what happened to you, on Caldor Station … how your parents died, how the massacre happened … I got it. I understood. I don’t expect that to vanish overnight. I don’t even expect it to vanish ever. But they’re still my people, Lock.”

  “Ixchel said they were our brothers and sisters.” Lochlan’s smile was utterly devoid of humor. “Mad old bat.”

  “But she was right about a lot.”

  “They’re the reason you were dying, Adam.”

  “They’re dying too.” Adam folded his arms around his middle. The wind was picking up. “You came with me to help them.”

  Lochlan walked to him, settled hands on his shoulders. “Chusile, I came with you for you.”

  Adam gazed at him for a long moment. Again, he remembered those early days—Lochlan supporting the proposal to cast him out, insulting him, blaming him for what seemed like every small inconvenience in his life. And now this.

  “You trust me,” he whispered. “That has to be a place you can start from.”

  “Adam.” Lochlan said his name in a heavy breath, curled his arms around Adam, and pulled him close. Adam went without resisting, let himself be held. From their earliest time together, Lochlan’s body had been like an anchor, warm and solid, even when it was still frightening and new. Now it was familiar. It was home, to the extent that he had a home anymore. To the extent that he had ever had one at all. He pressed his face into Lochlan’s neck, then lifted his head again.

  “If you can’t make yourself want to help the Protectorate, sooner or later you’re going to leave me.”

  Lochlan pulled back, eyes wide, shaking his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “This. All of it.” Adam met his gaze without flinching. “It’s going to get worse. It’s going to get harder, and I think death might end up being the best we can hope for. I don’t know if it can work. I have no idea what I’m even doing. And I … I don’t know if love is enough, Lock. I just don’t.”

  It was getting seriously dark, and as far as Adam could see, there were no stars in evidence—the clouds perhaps now too low and too thick. They would have to get back soon, though finding their way would probably not be too difficult, with the river to follow. But neither of them moved, and at last Lochlan spoke.

  “I don’t know what else I have.” He shook his head slowly. “But I’m not leaving you, Adam. Don’t you fucking talk like that; I’m not.” After a few more seconds of silence he pulled away, and there was a jerkiness in his movements. “Let’s … Let’s get back. This’ll have to do.”

  Together they scooped up the grass again. Lochlan led the way and Adam followed, silently.

  But it was true.

  Death might be the best we can hope for.

  Adam stirred but didn’t wake, and Lochlan sent up a silent prayer of thanks. He needed to sleep. Really, they both did, but if one of them had to be awake, he preferred it be himself. Lochlan slid a hand into Adam’s hair and tugged his head to rest against his chest, trying to wrap himself around Adam’s sleeping form. Again, he couldn’t help but feel how fragile he was getting.

  Weak.


  Adam, who even in the worst of his illness had been so strong.

  I’m not leaving you. The words clenched in his throat, though he didn’t say them. Shut up, I’m not.

  Except he had before. Not Adam, but others. So many, fucked and enjoyed and left soon after, because connections were their own horrible weakness, and when you loved someone and lost them it hurt. If life had taught him nothing else, it had driven that cruel lesson home. So of course, of course he had let himself fall into the arms of someone who was dying.

  Who was now charging toward lethal danger. Or trying to. And weren’t they in lethal danger already? Before long their food would run out. Their water was already very low. A few more days without replenishment, and …

  I’m not leaving you.

  The bird lying in his open palm; Ixchel’s knife; the tangle of guts on her kerchief. The story they told.

  “The fuck’re you thinking about so hard?”

  Lochlan looked up sharply to see Aarons staring at him. The fire had long since gone out, but in the distance two small moons had risen and they cast enough light to see by. Aarons’s face was unreadable, his eye keen as a blade, and his bionic one glowing brighter in the shadows.

  A face maybe not even a mother could love.

  “None of your business.”

  “Suit yourself.” Aarons rolled a shoulder. “Just seemed like it was troubling you, whatever it is.”

  “We’re in the middle of a desert with no transport and no idea where we’re going, and we’ll be out of food and water in another day or so. Yeah, I’m troubled.” Lochlan allowed himself a crooked, humorless smile. “Aren’t you?”

  Aarons returned his smile. On his scarred face it was even more crooked. “I’m not sleeping, am I? But what the fuck good is worrying about it gonna do? Won’t make rations appear outta thin fucking air, will it?”

  Lochlan inclined his head.

  “We’re alive,” Aarons went on. “That counts for everything. As long as we’re alive, there’s a chance, and I’m not giving up on that chance until I am quite literally dead. If that happens, it happens.”

  It probably wasn’t false bravado. Aarons sounded too matter-of-fact, with no element of boasting in it.

  “You know why he’s here. Adam. What he’s … What he’s trying to do.”

  “I saw it. Missy. Before she died. She wasn’t only out of her mind, boy. She was sick. Bad. I think that’s some of what drove her to it. She knew she was dead anyway.” He chuckled. “Most elaborate fucking suicide plan I ever saw. I did her a favor when I killed her.”

  “Is that why you’re helping us?”

  Aarons gazed at him for a long moment, and Lochlan could see the thoughts turning and grinding behind his eye. “I saw something on that worthless little rock,” he said finally. “I saw what might happen to us. What is happening. Look, boy, I never had much love for the Protectorate, even when I was military police for ’em. Even though I was born to ’em. Given all their benefits accordingly. You think that’s crazy, right? Like I said, I worked for them. Not only that. I did dirty work for them, shit that no one else wanted to do. But I never liked ’em. I can see what they are. They’ve been striding along, confident as you please, so sure that what they do is always right. They can’t even imagine any other way of doing things anymore.” He fell silent again for a few seconds. Then, “So I got no love for them. But people are people. The people at the bottom—Hell, the ones in the middle—they’re trying to live their lives. Most of ’em are good people, as far as good goes. They’re doing their best and they’re being lied to. Propping something up when it’s just gonna fall on ’em. Probably should fall. Sooner than later, if we want to minimize the damage.

  “Maybe I’m sick and tired of seeing people die for no good fucking reason. Maybe Adam’s right. Maybe forcing everyone to see their worlds differently is exactly what we need to do to get this whole thing toppled in just the correct way for us to be able to build something better. Maybe you’re right, all you mongrels.”

  Lochlan bristled at the word, but Aarons was smiling again, and there was something bizarrely affectionate about the smile. The word. Mongrels. And he thought of raya.

  Maybe they weren’t so different. Not in every way.

  “You love him.”

  Lochlan blinked. “What?”

  “Adam. You love him.” Aarons gestured toward the man in his arms, smile lingering about his mouth. Nothing accusing, no sign of distaste. Strange. “It’s pretty damn obvious.”

  “I—” Lochlan looked down at Adam, his face relaxed in sleep, mouth open, features that spoke of careful craftsmanship, and long, delicate lashes. He was perfect. Always perfect. There wasn’t much point in denying something as visible as his feelings. And why would he? Just because someone thought he should be ashamed of it didn’t mean he had to give a fuck about their opinion. Every reason not to. “I do.” He lifted his gaze. “Do you think that’s disgusting? Isn’t that what you raya say about it?”

  “No,” Aarons said quietly, and there was a sudden softness in his expression that Lochlan couldn’t interpret. “I don’t say that.”

  Lochlan nodded and relaxed a bit. He still didn’t trust Aarons, didn’t like him, but he didn’t think he was lying now.

  “I didn’t at first,” he said after a few more minutes of silence. “He was … I saved him and I didn’t even know why. He was annoying, he was a goddamn prude, and he was judging everything.” Lochlan leaned his cheek against the top of Adam’s head and closed his eyes. “The man grows on you,” he murmured, and smiled again. “Like a weed. Or a vine. He winds himself into you and you can’t get him loose.”

  “A lot of people died for him. On that planet.” Aarons sounded curious more than anything, almost eager, as if he was asking a question that he had held on to for a long time. “Was he worth it, do you think?”

  Lochlan considered. At any other time, the question would have put him on the defensive, but now he was far too tired, and it was a fair question for an outsider to ask. It was one that he suspected Adam still asked.

  “It wasn’t really about him, then. It was about all of us. That was the line, anyway.” Lochlan opened his eyes, met Aarons’s half gaze. “I’m not sure what I think about that. All I know is …” He sighed. “They asked me if I would die for him. I said yes. I’d still say yes. That’s all I know.”

  Slowly, Aarons nodded. “We do what we have to do,” he said again, and closed his own eye. The bionic one, a little alarmingly, didn’t close at all but continued to stare unblinking into the darkness. “Try to get some sleep, Bideshi. I’m not sure, but we might not have a lot of night left. And I got a feeling we’ll have a long day tomorrow.”

  Lochlan responded with a nod of his own. Aarons said nothing more, and within several minutes he was snoring gently. But Lochlan stayed awake for a while, holding Adam tightly, thinking too much and too hard.

  We do what we have to do.

  Isaac Sinder wasn’t sleeping.

  It was deep in third shift, and the ship was quiet, but Sinder paced through his quarters, fists clenched, now and then slamming one into his open palm, part of him itching to slam it into something else that could scream and cry. He wasn’t sure he remembered being this kind of angry before, because he couldn’t remember experiencing this kind of failure. Failure itself, yes, sure; one had to go through some of that, or one forgot how to deal with it. But to fail when success was all but assured …

  Apparently he couldn’t trust anyone. Those who were not actually duplicitous were probably incompetent. Had Cosaire gone through this, when time after time Adam Yuga slipped through her fingers? Kerry, gone. Yuga and his Bideshi lover, gone. And a fourth man, about whom he had suspicions that he dared not voice aloud even to himself. He had combed back through records, reports, dossiers. He had pulled together every single thing he could find that was even tangentially pertinent. None of it was conclusive, but together the picture they hinted at was nearl
y impossible. And awful. One man who was, for all intents and purposes, a Protectorate spymaster. A man who had been close to Cosaire, present for that final battle, who had turned against her. A man who had been regarded as loyal but not prone to doing things by the book, who weaved and dodged as the situation demanded and was a general irritant to the people who charged him with the work he did.

  A traitor, charged and vanished and hunted, to no avail. Here under his nose all this time. Perhaps someone he had passed in the corridors. Had seen on the bridge. Had spoken to. He had no way of being sure. But it made sense; wasn’t the man knowledgeable in infiltration techniques? Of everyone who had been present at the battle and who were suspected traitors, wasn’t this man most capable of something like this? Sinder felt the shape of the thing, the outlines of the threads that bound it together, and between those threads he leaped and swung and grabbed for a name.

  Bristol Aarons.

  But skilled though he was, how had he slipped through all the checks?

  Except there were ways. The truth was that anything could be forged, and out in the farthest reaches of human-occupied space, where law was only a word, it was possible to obtain the methods of such forgeries. Ways to slip through code checks and scans undetected, unidentified. Ways of altering one’s appearance. It was difficult, but it could be done.

  A man from the secret military police would know how to do it. He would have contacts.

  Aarons, working with Yuga. Kerry, working with Yuga. It was worse than he thought. Who else? How highly placed?

  He stopped in the center of the cabin and closed his eyes, forcing his breathing to slow. He had to be calm, cool. He had to think.

  Their escapees were still on the planet, after all. The search fleet had been deployed in orbit at regular intervals around it. They would catch anything that took off. Yuga and the others were effectively trapped.

  The only task was to find them.

  His door chimed, and he started, turning. “Come.”