by Josi Russell
The little plants grew up near the ceiling. Aria noted their size. They had been scrubbed away earlier this week and these were fairly new seedlings. She glanced out Gaynes’s barred window to the alley. The door next to it must have been the one Gaynes entered from the alley.
“Just, just sit here,” the clerk said, indicating a dark, slick chair in front of the desk, “and I’ll find him for you.” He turned nervously before he left. “Don’t touch anything,” he said, trying to sound authoritative.
Aria watched him close the door and heard him walk back along the long hallway they’d come down. Well, she was here. She went over what she’d tell Gaynes. The produce was contaminated. People were getting sick. He’d better stop selling it or—or what? Aria was at a loss. Saras’s Food Production Division, who was supposed to enforce the food safety rules, was shipping out the shriveled apples and the blighted rangkors.
As she thought about what she’d say to him, Aria’s gaze fell on a glass-fronted cabinet behind Gaynes’s desk. Inside, behind a large sculpture of a scrip, she could see the edge of the small silver box.
Something made her feel bold. Maybe it was her knowledge that Gaynes was underhanded and shady and didn’t deserve the privacy she would have afforded anyone else. Maybe it was her curiosity about what would make Daniel avoid her like he had. What was he involved in? Whatever it was, she slipped behind the desk and retrieved the box. Setting it softly on the desk, Aria glanced nervously at the door. It was still closed. She flipped the little clasps on the box and opened it carefully.
Inside was a small silver object, tapered at one end. There were two more depressions in the lining of the box, shaped exactly to fit two more of these little missile-shaped objects, but they were empty. Whatever they were, this was the only one left. She lifted it out, weighing it in her hand, and turned it over.
Aria heard Gaynes’s voice outside in the hallway. Startled, she dropped the little object. It bounced off across the rug. She snapped the box closed and stuck it hurriedly back where she’d found it, closing the cabinet and moving back around the desk. She saw the little silver object on the floor and leaned to scoop it up, then dropped into the chair just as she heard the door open.
Gaynes looked patently annoyed when he saw her. He walked around his desk and sat heavily in the big chair on the other side. “You’re not from the Colony Offices.”
Aria thought fast. “I never said I was.” Then she launched into the offense, standing up and feigning bravery. “You’re making people sick, Mr. Gaynes. You have to stop selling these blighted fruits and vegetables.”
Gaynes’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at her. “I don’t force anyone to buy my stuff, lady. Who are you, anyway?”
Aria deflected the question. “Have you seen the people with the flower bruises, Mr. Gaynes?”
“Get out.”
“Are you going to stop?”
“I’m going to call the security force, is what I’m going to do. Get out.”
Aria could see he wasn’t going to change anything, and as she looked past him she noticed that she hadn’t put the silver box all the way behind the scrip statue. It had obviously been moved. She didn’t want to know what he’d do if he found she’d been poking through his office while he was away. His heavy hands on top of the desk looked as if he could crack a chunk of Yynium with them, just by squeezing it.
“I’ll go, Mr. Gaynes, but think about the stuff you’re selling. It’s dangerous.” Aria spun and walked out the door, forcing herself not to look back down the long hallway towards him. She let herself out the door by the register and controlled her steps, feeling her heart hammering progressively faster until she sank into a cab and gave the driver her address. When she did glance back toward the market, Gaynes was watching her from the window, a puzzled expression on his face.
Chapter 23
Kaia stood beside her father in front of the Lumina Defense Headquarters, watching as the alien ship moved slowly, methodically, over the circular city, from one side to the other. It cruised, darkening the buildings and people below with its shadow. Kaia felt a surge of apprehension as the Others of Beta Alora flashed through her mind.
But there had, so far, been no aggression other than the disabling of the orbital defenses, and her father said they weren’t sure if that was even intentional. The ship just cruised.
Lumina’s two company ships were airborne, flying a grid pattern high above the alien ship in case of trouble. Kaia watched the late afternoon sun glancing off them and wondered how much good they would do against the massive alien vessel. She wondered what chance any of their defenses had. Reagan had all the ground troops on alert in all of Minea’s settlements, and the battleships stood ready to come to Lumina if needed, but what kind of weapons these aliens had was still mostly a mystery.
Reagan interrupted her thoughts, “What did you do to defend against the Others?”
Kaia thought for a long moment. “We were mostly on the offensive,” she said, “trying to make it to the statehouse. But the few times we came up against them face-to-face, I think Ethan mostly tried to strike first. That was the only moment he had an advantage.”
Reagan nodded, his eyes clouded with thought. One of the Orbital Defense officers approached.
“Sir, some more information.” The man handed Reagan a handheld screen and Kaia saw her father’s jaw set.
“What is it?”
Reagan flipped the screen around for her to see. Above their planet, waiting in orbit, were eight more of alien ships. Kaia saw the pieces began to come together in Reagan’s mind. He spoke aloud. “This scouting ship, the fleet waiting for an order to move in, this has all the earmarks of an invasion.” He straightened his shoulders. The admiral was not about to let that happen.
A chill ran through Kaia. “Why don’t we bring all the battleships here?” she asked, wanting as much firepower as possible.
Reagan glanced at the soldiers milling around and gestured her inside the headquarters building. They walked the long hallway to his temporary office. Inside, a screen on his desk was showing the same feed the OD officer had shown him. On it the alien ships hung like spiders against the blackness of space.
Kaia saw her father run a hand across his forehead. He always did that when he was agitated.
“If this is an invasion, and I’m not saying it is, this ship may be a decoy to lure all our defenses down here to the farthest corner of the settlements.” He paced, and Kaia pictured the eight settlements, laid out almost like an X across plains and mountains. Reagan continued, “We need battleships in each settlement, in case the other ships make a move. Reagan looked into her eyes.
“We’re going to need to revise our defense plan,” he said.
***
The two small ships that had risen from the base continued to standby for the next several hours as Galo scanned the city. He scanned as close as he dared to, afraid of pushing the defense ships to aggression. But the Vala were not here and had not been here. Though the realization was bitter in his mind, he felt they must be somewhere in these settlements and was eager to move on and attempt to locate them in the next one.
He pulled the Cliprig up and away from the circular city and set a course for the next settlement on his map. Halfway there the translator came online and told him the name of the next city was Oculys. It lay nestled in the foot of the massive folded mountains he saw in the distance, and he watched them grow larger and larger as he approached. At the city’s edge, he engaged the translator and opened a communications frequency.
“Humans of—” What was this city’s strange name again? He looked at his screen. “Humans of Oculys,” he said, using his most convincing voice, “I am Galo of the Asgre, and I have come to retrieve my property.”
Galo waited, but no answer came on his comms lines. He was disappointed. He had been looking forward to conversing with them and learning what they knew of his slaves. He wondered if they were just impolitely ignoring him or if they w
ere afraid to respond. Nevertheless, he began his scans of this city, and then of the surrounding mountains. He found nothing, but there were six more settlements, and Galo would visit each one until he found the Vala.
Chapter 24
Ethan’s spinning head was filled with the sounds of the survey crew’s cheering. He joined them, hearing his own hoarse voice falling out into the warm night air. Perching in single file on the ridge, the little group sat watching their first glimpse of the outdoors in weeks. Even Brynn’s announcement that her shoulder light, one of two that remained, was dead, didn’t dampen their spirits. They still had Ndaiye’s shoulder light, and they were almost out of the cave.
A clamor drew their attention. They saw hundreds of the big, bat-like creatures spiraling around the opening, dappling the night sky. One of them landed atop the ridge near the group. Before Ethan could stop her, Brynn reached out towards it. She quickly pulled her hand back, though, as spines rose out of the little animal’s fur. “It’s a porcubat!” Brynn cried. It hissed viciously and launched itself off the edge into the night sky.
Ndaiye was giggling. “A porcubat? I’ve never heard of that before.”
Brynn laughed a little herself. “You know, because it’s half bat and half porcupine?”
“I picked up on that. Maybe you should be a zoologist instead of a surveyor.”
The path dropped down and around in front of them. Ethan hoped it led outside. They didn’t know if they would be able to see the stars once they descended, though, and they stayed atop the ridge clinging to the sight of them for a long time.
Ndaiye led when they finally started down, the others keeping their eyes on his feeble light. As they progressed, though, Ethan saw they weren’t in total darkness. Short, blunt, fluorescing rock formations glowed along the edges of the trail and along the cliff wall, like light posts leading them down the ridge.
He wasn’t sure if it was the fluorescing formations or the sight of the outdoors, but something made them bold and they hurried along the knife’s edge of the ridge, barely noticing the chasm that fell away beside them. Hope made them giddy. This was the way home. They were nearly out. Ethan felt the sheer exhilaration of being up so high and tasting, for the first time in so long, the fresh outdoor air.
The small ridge sloped down sharply, and they slowed a bit to better navigate it. Ahead of him, without warning, Ethan heard the sickening cry of Ndaiye’s fall. Anger washed over him as he scrambled behind Maggie to get to the edge from which his friend had fallen.
The ridge dropped suddenly away, and Ethan leaned over, peering into the darkness below. Ethan sucked in his breath with relief to see his friend only a few meters below, sitting in the glow of their last remaining light. Ethan could see that Ndaiye was holding his arm.
“Everyone be careful. It’s a bit of a drop.” Ndaiye said, his usually jocular voice strained.
Ethan lay on his belly, wriggling backwards over the edge. He hung his feet over and stretched his arms above him as he lowered himself down. When he dropped the last meter or so, he knew about how far to expect to fall in the darkness before he found the ground again. Once he was down, he helped Maggie, Brynn, and finally Traore as they dropped down one by one. He checked Ndaiye’s arm. Though they had little light to diagnose it by, it was assuredly broken.
They dismantled the stretcher from the pack and used the handles as a temporary splint. Ndaiye didn’t howl with the pain it must have caused him, but he did hum vigorously.
Brynn’s concerned voice cut through the dark. “I can’t tell for sure,” she said, “but I think this is a dead end.”
Impossible, Ethan thought, we saw the outside. We can go home. He walked over to Brynn, trying to see in the feeble light.
In front of her was a very high wall. Running his hands along the rough stone, Ethan walked in a slow circle and found that Brynn was right. Like so many paths in the cave, following Knife’s Edge ridge had led them to a dead end. They were in a pit, shaped like a bowl, probably carved by a long-gone waterfall. Ethan looked backward, up the ridge. It would be hard to get back up to the place they’d dropped down.
Just then, Ndaiye’s shoulder light went out, plunging them into total cave darkness.
Ethan swore. “Sit down everyone. Sit down. We can’t move around. We won’t be able to see where we’re going. There could be vertical shafts or drop-offs.” He put his head in his hands. There was no way out without light.
It had happened. The dark of the cave had closed around him. He wondered how long a death in this environment would take.
As their eyes adjusted, Ethan saw glowing around the pit a few of the blunt fluorescing formations, like the ones that had lit their way on the Knife’s Edge above. Perhaps they could be removed from the wall and used to light their way.
But light their way where? The sides of the pit were smooth and high. There would be no getting out of this one.
Ethan sat heavily on the ground, the cold sinking into his bones. It was over, then. They were out of food and water, and now they were out of light.
Brynn began to cry. “But I didn’t want to die,” she said in the dark.
Hearing her piteous sobs made Ethan’s weary soul ache. He stood and slowly moved to kneel beside one of the blunt fluorescent formations. He took out his useless flashlight.
The ringing of metal on stone filled the cavern and stirred up several porcubats that had settled on the sheer faces of the rock. Finally, the formation chipped off and Ethan walked carefully back to the middle of the pit. It was heavy and smooth in his hands.
He set it down, and the five scooted around it miserably. At least it cast a feeble light so they could make out the shapes of each other and know they were not alone.
It seemed particularly unfair that they’d come close enough to breathe the night air only to die this close to the outside.
“Don’t cry, Brynn,” Ethan said softly.
Ethan glanced up in the direction of the Knife’s Edge. He saw the fluorescing formations reaching up and away towards the high point where they had seen the stars. If he was going to die, he would rather die there, with the wind in his face and the sight of the night sky, than here in this dank pit.
Ethan drew in a sharp breath.
There, on the edge of the pit, on the ridge that lead to the Knife’s Edge, stood one of the figures he’d been seeing. But this time it didn’t disappear.
From what he could tell, it was about the size of a person, covered with white wrinkly skin that glowed pale in the dark cavern. It had large eyes and it reached a long-fingered hand out to Ethan.
“Look at the ridge,” he said quietly to the crew, “but don’t panic.”
He kept his eyes on the figure. He heard the gasps the moment they saw it, too. They sat still.
At his periphery Ethan saw another, much closer, figure. It was in the pit with them, and when he looked at it, another emerged from the solid rock behind it. Both were carrying blocks which they laid down near the back wall of the pit as more of the figures materialized.
“Dontcrybrynn, dontcrybrynn,” they echoed Ethan’s words in soft, harmonious voices. “Dontcrybrynn.”
More appeared, and more, until the circle of surveyors in the middle was surrounded by the strange white creatures, moving in and out of the rock face, busy stacking the blocks they carried. Startled by their sudden appearance, it took a long time for Ethan to recognize that they were creating a staircase.
As it grew ever higher, so did Ethan’s mood. They may get out of here after all.
When the staircase reached up and far out of sight, five of the creatures came forward and took the hands of the humans.
As the long fingers slipped under Ethan’s hand, he felt the soft, cool skin of the creature. It raised his hand to its forehead in what Ethan recognized to be a greeting, then, walking carefully, it led him up the blocks. Ethan glanced down as he stepped. He could see from the glassy surface that they were walking on blocks of pure Yynium.
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As they climbed with their guides, Ethan watched his steps carefully. The walls of the gap narrowed a bit as they climbed, but the other wall of stone was still plenty far away. It was close enough to see in the pale light of the luminescent formations, but much too far to leap for if he slipped. His guide climbed easily, though, and Ethan saw that these beings weren’t as afraid of a fall, and the sudden stop at the bottom, as he was.
Near the middle of the long climb, Ethan felt his strength begin to ebb. He was relieved when, above him several meters, Traore sat down heavily on the staircase to rest. They were all tired, dehydrated, and hungry. Their bodies were at the end of their energy. Carefully, Ethan turned around on the narrow staircase and sat on the slick Yynium blocks, gazing out over the dark chasm.
As he looked, Ethan felt his breath come quickly. Across the abyss was a hanging cavern—a glowing pocket in the stone wall. The inside of the chamber was lit strangely with the luminescent green formations, and around the edges, in shadowy serenity, were the ghosts. Against the walls, small versions of the figures hung sleeping in stretchy, upright cocoons. Their faces were uncovered and serene. Tears streaked out of their closed eyes. Below each one he saw a strange formation that he’d seen nowhere else in the caverns: a loose pile of crystallized droplets, glittering in the feeble light.
Seeing them in vulnerable slumber, his fear of them was erased. He was taken back to Ship 12-22, where he’d watched over his own sleeping loved ones. In their alien faces he saw Aria. He saw the children. He saw, in this strange group of creatures, his family, and he knew he could not give up. Not willingly. He would not sit there in the dark and die. He stood, feeling new strength in his legs. If he fell to his death, if the porcubats lanced him, if the krech overtook him, then he would die knowing that he did not stop. Knowing that they took him down still fighting to get home.