Heir Ascendant (Faded Skies Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  Maya didn’t say anything. A moment of silence hung heavy over the room before the once-obese woman dragged herself to a control box on the wall. She pushed a few large red buttons, causing whooshing noises to erupt from within the chamber at Binks’ feet. Soon, the glow of orange flames licked at the bottom of a door blocking the conveyor from the furnace.

  At the bewildered look Maya gave her, the woman let off a resigned sigh. “The man who showed me how to operate these controls went down the belt a month ago. Funny the things you learn out of necessity.” She flicked a pair of switches and turned a knob. The hissing inside the oven got louder. “On account o’ you, I don’t need to hurry up and train someone before I’m ridin’ the Devil’s bobsled myself.”

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Maya, too quiet for anyone to hear.

  Genna trembled. Her reddened eyes bugged, and her head kept moving in a subtle no shake as the woman threw a lever switch. The hatch scraped upward, revealing a yawning inferno that let off a wave of intense heat. A red button started the conveyor; Binks slid forward on rattling metal wheels, vanishing into the flaming maw. The door closed behind him, muting the roar.

  “Mom?” Maya wrapped her arms around Genna’s waist.

  She rested her hands on Maya’s shoulders, speaking in a distant tone. “I was right behind him. If Id’a taken one step more to my right, that bullet would’a got us both.”

  “Mom.” Maya looked up and around at the other Brigade people. “There’s something else. It’s not aliens or asteroids. Fade should’ve been gone by now. It was designed to dissipate in seventy-two hours.”

  All eyes fell on her.

  “Ascendant is making Fade. I saw files on Vanessa’s terminal authorizing it. The bioassay drones aren’t scanning for it. They release it in the upper atmosphere when Ascendant needs an uptick in Xenodril sales. They’re poisoning everyone on purpose… for profit. I wanna go home and be happy, even if we don’t have any money or barely any clothes and aren’t sure if we’ll be able to eat… but we can’t let them keep doing that.”

  The Fade victims stared at her.

  Carver walked around the end of the empty conveyor and took a knee at Maya’s side. “I’m not going to ask a little girl to get her hands bloody, but you can still help.” He looked over his shoulder at the anger brewing among the formerly doomed. “You can be the face of change.”

  “You want me to make a video. Barnes asked too.”

  He nodded. “We can come up with something right here in the alley.”

  Maya turned her gaze to the gauze-wrapped bodies. They regarded her in a way she couldn’t recall ever experiencing before. Not the fearful stares of Vanessa’s underlings, the put-upon annoyance of the marketing people, or the simmering resentment of a population who saw her wherever they turned. An odd thing lurked in the expressions of these weary sick―respect. Maybe she could inspire people the way Genna inspired her.

  She looked Carver in the eye. “Okay. I will.”

  oft clanks of boots and sneakers on a grated walkway echoed down a long, rounded tunnel. Maya hurried behind Genna in single file. The pipe offered only a few inches of clearance over the woman’s head, smaller than the broken tubes of the Jigsaw River. A full night’s rest curled up with her mother in the basement of The Hangar had washed away much of the terror of the warehouse raid. It seemed easy to think of it like a movie she’d watched rather than lived. Still, no one had spoken much last night. The men stayed up late, drinking too much and celebrating Binks’ memory.

  Maya had trouble falling asleep, too riddled with disgust and guilt over the idea not-Mom had poisoned all those people only to make money. The Xenodril had taken a bite out of Ashley, leaving the little girl exhausted and unable to get out of bed, though she couldn’t stop smiling because she knew she’d get better. Maya had spent a little while visiting her before they’d left the Fade ward. It twisted her up inside to hear a five-year-old talk about it being good her mother had ‘gone away,’ since it meant the pain stopped.

  Hours later, Maya shuffled along an underground passage, sneaking out of the Sanctuary Zone. Genna knew of several routes that allowed Brigade operatives in and out of the New Baltimore Sanctuary Zone, some pipes, some abandoned subway tunnels. They’d climbed a ladder along the outside of a spherical three-story water tank and gone down the huge pipe at the bottom. Being inside the enormous tank, staring at the drain, had scared her, even with it being empty. No wonder the Authority hadn’t found it―no one in their right mind would go into a place like that. Maya shivered, terrified at the thought of being trapped inside it when someone turned on the flow. It took over a mile of walking before she’d stopped trembling at the thought a drowning torrent might come out of nowhere and sweep them down the drain.

  She peered up at the blank, pale grey tube. Seams passed every few paces. Most likely, this pipe passed under the flattened devastation around the city that she had previously flown over, a two-mile-wide swath of rubble where tiny fires burned in the once-basements of tall buildings.

  Genna’s mood had improved after a night’s rest, and she moved at a pace Maya found difficult to keep up with. She didn’t complain, focusing instead on switching between fast walking or running whenever she lagged too far back.

  A left turn led to a smaller pipe that forced Genna to crawl and Maya to stoop. Unlike the one with the grating to walk on, the offshoot had no lights. Before long, darkness surrounded them. She kept a hand on Genna’s back. The nylon bag bumped against her legs, the rattle of pills loud in the metal tunnel.

  Eventually, Genna stopped. “Here we are.” The woman shifted position and pulled Maya forward. She felt around until she located Maya’s arms, and guided her hands onto the rung of a thin metal ladder. “I’m gonna go up first, make sure it’s clear.”

  “Okay,” whispered Maya.

  Genna climbed past her, coming dangerously close to stepping on Maya’s fingers. The rustling of her pants stopped a short while later. A grunt preceded an ear-splitting squeal of metal. Blinding daylight leaked in from a crescent shape when Genna pushed up on a dome hatch with a red wheel on the bottom. She stretched up and peered out, twisting left and right. A few seconds later, she heaved the hatch up and climbed out.

  Maya raced up the ladder. Soft grey silt surrounded a three-foot-tall section of pipe jutting out of the earth. Except for the crumbling fragments of concrete walls, the ground looked like something that belonged more on the Moon than in Baltimore. Genna slipped her hands under Maya’s armpits and plucked her out of the pipe before setting her on her feet nearby and closing the hatch.

  She kicked at the silt. It reacted like snow, only not cold.

  “Ash,” said Genna. “It’s all ash.”

  The wall of the Sanctuary Zone lurked a ways off to the east. They had emerged about three quarters of the way across the debris moat surrounding the Sanc. A faint breeze carried traces of mildew, burning plastic, and a clingy chemical smell. Genna pulled her along by the arm and ducked under a large angled slab of wall propped up on a bent steel I beam. She held a finger to her lips in a shushing gesture and waited while tapping her finger on her knee to mark time.

  After twenty-eight seconds, drone fans passed overhead. Genna made no attempt to move, tapping on. Maya kept quiet. Seventy seconds later, another set of drone fans passed. She continued counting, but glanced back at Maya with a meaningful stare. When the next set of fans went by at exactly seventy seconds, Genna tapped twice more and rushed forward.

  Maya ran, jumping over smaller steel beams sticking out of the ash and darting around larger chunks of concrete. The farther away from the Sanctuary Zone they got, the less flat the terrain became.

  “Sixty one,” said Genna, before diving into a trench under another wedge of concrete wall, this one fanged with twisted rebar.

  Maya slid down the incline into the dugout and Genna whisked her in, holding her tight. They lay in silence until another drone passed overhead.

  “I don’t
wanna scare you, but these drones ain’t gonna try to scan us first.”

  “No.” Maya swallowed saliva. “That’s not scary at all.”

  Genna marked time with her finger, gazing up at the concrete. Tap… tap… tap… “We’re almost clear.”

  At the next passage of fans, which sounded farther away, Genna crawled out the other side of their cover and sprinted. Maya followed suit, grabbing the strap of her bag to keep it from flying off. Beyond twenty yards of flat ash field up ahead, the moonscape gave way to dirt by a wall of thick grass. Genna dashed over the powdery ground and leapt into the brush.

  Maya crossed her arms over her face and plowed right in, not caring how many bugs waited to climb all over her. She trudged along the trail Genna left, fighting against wild blades of meadow grass that stretched over her head. A few minutes later, she stumbled clear onto a dirt road―and into a hug.

  “We’re far enough away now.” Genna smiled at the sky. “They won’t bother with us here.”

  Still a fair walk to the west, the hulking forms of the Spread stacks gleamed in the sunlight. It wasn’t yet noon, putting the sun to their backs and painting the massive junkyard in a brilliant array of colors. Cargo containers of red, green, orange, pink, and rust-smeared white swayed in a breeze that didn’t blow at ground level.

  Genna headed left, due south, following an open dirt path. Maya smiled at her sneakers. Would someone try to steal her clothes like they’d done to Sarah? Possibly in the Dead Space―those people living in plastiboard boxes. Most of the children there only had scraps of plastic or fabric tied on as skirts, a few, not even that. Would someone think it fair to steal from one child so another suffered less? Maybe Sarah had been exaggerating to scare her into staying with the group.

  “Mom? Do people really steal clothes out here?”

  “People out here will steal anything they can get away with. Most leave me alone because they know the look in my eye. You stare at them with that ‘go ahead, give me a reason’ face, and they’ll back off.”

  “I don’t think I’d scare anyone.” Maya smiled. “Not ‘til I’m bigger.”

  “Well, I suppose you better not run off alone again.”

  Maya looked up. “Don’t get arrested again.”

  Genna laughed. “Yeah. I’ll work on that.” Her mood darkened. “Reminds me. I gotta have a talk with ol’ Brian… and show you the elevator. We got a secret way out.”

  “I don’t think he’ll do it again.” Maya jumped over a puddle.

  “Yeah.” Genna shook her head, making her long, ropey hair swish back and forth. “That’s for damn sure.”

  Weeds parted on the right, and a familiar rifle-bearing figure in a poncho emerged.

  Genna reached for her handgun.

  Maya grabbed her arm. “That’s Pope.” She let go and looked up at him. “You came after me…”

  “Yeah. When you didn’t come back overnight, I uhh… got a little worried.” He shook his head while chuckling. “This that momma of yours?”

  Genna and Pope held eye contact for a long moment before she allowed a smile. “Yeah.”

  “Well, all right then.” A curious mixture of disappointment and relief came over him. “S’pose I got some solar panels to tend to then.”

  Maya hugged him. “Thank you for your help. If you get tired of living in the tunnels, there’s a lot of open apartments in our building.”

  “He don’t look like he’d be able to make the rent,” said Genna with a grin.

  “Pope’s a veteran too.” Maya smiled. “Doesn’t he get a discount?”

  Genna offered a hand. “Nice meetin’ ya Pope. Where’d you wind up?”

  “75th Rangers.”

  “Aw shit!” Genna grabbed him with a huge handshake. “I was with the 494th.”

  “Night Terrors.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “Nunquam vidi.”

  “Damn straight. Maybe we could use some like-minded friends.” Genna nodded toward the Hab.

  He patted Maya on the head. “Got some stuff ta deal with… I might just take you up on that someday. Take care of yourself, Ranger, and take care of this kid. She’s a handful.”

  “I hear that.”

  Maya smiled. “You too.”

  Pope wandered off into the tall grass.

  Once the rustling of his passage faded to the low whorl of the wind, Maya looked up at Genna. “He’s not married.”

  “Secure that shit, soldier.” Genna grabbed her shoulder and pulled her along.

  Maya laughed. “You were looking.”

  A trace of a smile played at her lips, but her mother kept a hard expression pointed at the world. Maya held her hand, eager to be home.

  They walked for hours, munching on a chewy meat-like substance Genna referred to as ‘jerky.’ It didn’t taste bad, but Maya’s jaw ached after only a few pieces. The nice dirt path curved the wrong way, forcing them to divert over a short field of dead grass and onto a smashed-up paved road.

  High-rise buildings, gutted and twisted by bombs, loomed ahead. The wind tore howls from the exposed frames and girders. Now and then, a click or a snapannounced some piece of concrete, debris, or a random object falling to the ground. Maya gazed around at the destruction, trying to reconcile the scenery with history e-learns that had pictures and video of how everything used to be.

  “How many people died?”

  Genna looked down at her. “That’s kind of a vague question.”

  “In the war.” She punted a fist-sized rock to the side.

  “They say between sixty and seventy percent of the Earth’s population. The lucky ones went right away to the nukes, but that’s only a small portion. The ground fighting that followed made death by bomb seem like a mercy. Savage. Russia and China were kicking the shit out of each other. For whatever reason, we got our teeth into North Korea and wouldn’t let go. It stopped being about national identity and turned into this ugly mess. Like we had to kill all the Koreans out of some twisted sense of payback. Command structure broke down after the second wave of missile strikes. Majors and lieutenants in charge of individual units suddenly found themselves at the top of the chain. They all had different ideas of what we should be doing. My CO wanted to retake Seoul. The SOKOs had a real shitty time of it. They were on our side, but in all the chaos, they still looked Korean.” Genna sighed. “Damn miracle anyone walked away from that.”

  “Are people always bad?” asked Maya.

  “Maybe that’s why we’re still around. In the middle of it all, the enemy stopped being people and became bugs we had to step on. I’m sure the NOKOs felt the same way about us. It took a couple of weeks, but eventually there weren’t enough of either side to really call a military anymore. Our officers started goin’ after each other, claimin’ territory. They didn’t bother telling us the government was gone. When we found out, most of us grunts walked away. There was no war, no country left to fight for, nothin’ but killin’ for the sake of havin’ nothin’ better to do. Shit got tribal and ugly over there. Europe was the same way, far as I know. I’m not sure what made people settle down, but eventually, maybe five years ago, it all got quiet. Sometimes I like to think there’s this collective human consciousness, and we all got the fuck tired of fighting.”

  Maya nodded.

  The shady haze of the Baltimore Habitation District appeared in the distance hours later. By then, the sun had passed overhead, lengthening the shadows stretching away from the old buildings within the Dead Space. Genna circled farther to the west than Maya’s attempted beeline trip to the glowing Citizen city. Her route avoided much of the population living in boxes, as well as the cannibalistic wanderers.

  Maya told Genna about them. When she finished, Genna stopped, took a knee, and stared into her eyes with her hands on her shoulders.

  “If anythin’ like this ever happens again, you promise me you gonna stay where it’s safe. You got so goddamned lucky…” Genna crushed her with a hug.

  Maya basked in the feeling of being l
oved and yelped at a swat on the backside.

  “That’s for runnin’ off alone.” Genna smiled despite a few tears.

  “Aww, that’s damn heartwarming,” said a male voice.

  Maya leaned to the left to peer past Genna’s arm.

  Two men in shredded versions of the ubiquitous grey filter ponchos stepped out. Both had the breathing masks up over their faces; the man on the left also wore sunglasses but didn’t seem to have any pants, and neither of them had shoes. Both shivered, twitched, wiped their noses, and blinked in a continuous cycle of nervous tics. The one on the right appeared to be wearing heavy purple-black eye shadow, but made from bruise rather than cosmetics.

  She grimaced at their hairy chicken legs, grateful the shredded garments were long.

  “We don’t wanna hurt ya. Leave everything in a pile and go ‘way.” Sunglasses raised a handgun at them.

  “Everything?” asked Maya.

  “Yah,” said the other man, brandishing a machete large enough to qualify as a sword. “If you ain’t born with it, drop it and get walkin’.”

  “It warm,” said the sunglass-wearer. “We need cash more than you need them clothes.”

  “Boots are mine,” said the sword man.

  Maya held still, staring at the pistol. When Genna didn’t say or do anything, she swallowed a lump of anger. Losing the vaccine shots was far worse than being left with nothing on. Clothes could be replaced. She’d happily endure walking naked the rest of the way home if she had to in order to give Sarah and the others vaccine shots, but these men would take that too. Anger left no room for fear. If I can get close, I can grab the gun. Mom took those other guys out so fast. All she needs is a second… “O-okay. You can have our stuff. Please don’t shoot my mom.” She reached up to pull the large BDU shirt off.

  Genna put a hand on her shoulder and shook her head. “You’re not going to shoot us.” She advanced at the men in a slow walk.

  Maya tugged the shirt back onto her shoulders.

  “No?” The quivering pistol lifted to aim at her face. “I can still sell your shit with blood on it.”