In the distance, the Governor’s residence sat in a massive park-like district off to the east. The upper class of Oberon City had country homes out in the hills beyond the city, including the man who was, in title at least, in charge. Everyone knew OberCorp really ran things here.
Everything below him grew rapidly larger, then skewed out around him as the bike leveled off. Now other structures rose up on either side of his bike, from industrial plants to commercial buildings splashed with the logos of some of Oberon’s own companies, as well as several multi-world conglomerates.
Xander was over the Midcity now, following an invisible rail as the grid assigned him a flight path. He folded his wings behind him.
This zone was reserved for individual traffic. Delivery trucks and trains used the crowded streets below, which were finally beginning to dry out from the storm.
Xander’s destination was the spaceport on the northern edge of the city, where he’d meet the incoming shuttle from Titan Station. He veered onto a northbound connector, his guidance system selecting the least busy path.
Soon he was merging onto one of the main air causeways, riding out of the central city on a path that would take him out to High Slopes. He pulled his wings in tightly and gunned the engine, determined to move forward.
THE SHUTTLE blasted away from Titan Station, moving at a serious clip. It swung in a wide arc, eventually turning around to give Jameson a view of the donut-shaped installation. It was not the largest station he had ever been through, even in his short lifetime. Transfer Station, anchored to the elevator cable that touched down on the equator in Earth’s South American quadrant, had that honor. Jameson had passed through Transfer a year before, when he’d gone to San Francisco on old Earth for his Masters training with the guild. It was as big as a city, six tori stacked upon one another, each one as large or larger than Titan, and they were expanding it yet again now.
As the shuttle veered around, Oberon came into view. The shuttle shot out past the ragged edge of the world, over the rim wall that encircled it a half mile high.
Zefron and Davis were in the seats in front of him. The boy’s hands were pressed against the cool plas window, his eyes wide with wonder.
Jameson was about to say something when the shuttle banked, coming back around toward Oberon and giving him his first real view of the backside of the world. The Split.
The landscape, if you could call it that, was half in sunshine and half in shadow. The part that was illuminated was a nightmare of shattered stone, although much of it was hidden under perpetual cloud cover. A great storm circled the center of gravity like water around a drain, throwing off periodic tempests over the rim of the world, smaller storms that spilled over the mountains like the fog over the old Golden Gate Bridge, back on Earth.
The fact that he could make out details at all at this distance made it clear the huge scale involved.
Out toward one edge of the Split, a patch of light glowed.
“That bit of light out there? That’s Alpha Camp,” Zefron was telling his son. “That’s one of the places where they mine the ores. It’s all done manually, because electronics don’t work out there. There’s too much interference.”
“Then what are the lights?”
“Smart kid.” Zefron glanced back at Jameson and grinned. Jameson gave him the thumbs-up. “They burn oil. That’s a huge chimney that lights up the area and carries off the residue up into space.”
Jameson activated his cirq. “Angie, I want to review my notes on Oberon.” Angela was his mother’s name. It had just seemed natural to use it for his PA too. His parents frowned on bioware because it “subverted God’s plan,” but it had been invaluable in his career, and this was his way of making it okay.
“Here you go,” Angie said in a voice that was eerily similar to his mother’s.
He closed his eyes and the documents appeared in his mind’s eye.
Discovered by AmSplor in the second wave in 2857, Oberon’s unique geology had provided a raw ore called amalite, a compact power source useful in many areas of the Common Worlds’ far-flung economy. For two hundred years afterward, OberCorp had run the planet as its own personal fiefdom until it was brought to heel, forcefully, by the Common Worlds.
The corporation still held sway here, unofficially. The Syndicate, an organized crime ring, was also a factor.
Interesting. There’d been two waves of human colonization here, not just one. The first had been from a life ship that had reached the planet five hundred years before the first FTL ships. The skythane, as they were called, had created their own culture, and their language drift had made early interactions with the landers, the second-wave colonists… difficult. There were rumors of a virtual genocide of the original population.
The shuttle started to tremble. They were entering the planetary atmosphere. Jameson opened his eyes and looked out the window—they were about to pass over the edge of the world once more.
“Attention, passengers, in about thirty seconds, we will lose power. It’s nothing to be alarmed about. We’re coming close to the interference zone. The shuttle was built for this, and we will be past it in just under a minute.”
Easy for you to say.
About twenty seconds later, the power dropped down to nothing. The g-force created by the thrust was there, and then it wasn’t, and the cabin lights went dark.
Davis started to cry in the darkness.
“Hey little guy,” Jameson said in his best singsong voice. “Let’s play a game. Let’s see if we can hold our breath until the lights come back on. What do you say?” He demonstrated.
Davis looked back at him in the dim planetary glow and nodded. The boy took a deep breath.
Jameson counted off the time, and Davis did too, though his counting was off.
Zefron shot him a thankful look.
Just when Jameson thought his lungs would burst, the lights came back on. He exhaled forcefully and took a deep breath.
Davis laughed. “Let’s do it again!”
Jameson shook his head. “Sorry, but you’re too good for me!”
“You’re great with kids.” Zefron smiled.
“I’m a psych.” Jameson grinned back. “I worked with a bunch of them during my training.” He glanced out the window. The ground was rushing up toward them, the waters of the Gildensea reflecting the light of Oberon’s primary. The clouds were dissipating.
Oberon City sat at the edge of the planet’s only continent, bounded on the west by the Gildensea. The city spread out from the edge of the water like a complex spiderweb. As the shuttle descended, Jameson could see the spine of the arco towers that housed most of the residents of Oberon.
“That’s Oberon City,” Zefron said to his son, pointing to the towers below as morning swept over the coast. They grew steadily, ten of them running in a long row, all identical, built by the OberCorp to house most of the city’s tens of thousands of permanent residents.
“How many stories?” Davis asked.
“About two hundred.”
Causeways led out of the core of the city into the other cities along the coast on the “smooth” side of the world on Oberon’s only continent. The rest of the world was wild—the Outland, the locals called it, at least according to the dataset OberCorp had slitted him. Old Oberon, as he thought of it, mostly untouched since before the current wave of mankind had come here five hundred years before.
Outside the city core, lower buildings spread out, in some areas fairly well organized along a standard north-south street grid, in others a vast shantytown spread out like a cancer. The Slander. He’d read about this lawless zone at the city’s edge, but the reports didn’t do it justice. It was vast.
In the distance, he saw the Pyramus Mountains, apparently thrust up when the world had been so violently sundered in two.
The shuttle veered away from the city, g-force pushing him back into the padded chair, and banked toward the landing pad that sat on the metropolis’s outer edge. A comp
any representative would be waiting there for him. Perhaps he could convince them to give him a tour of the Split, and maybe even show him the source of the psychoamoratic drug, pith.
He wondered for the hundredth time why he’d been chosen for this particular mission. There were thousands of pith specialists in the Guild, a number of whom had half a hundred years of experience or more. Perhaps they didn’t want to be sent to this backwater end of the Common Worlds?
He was inordinately grateful for the opportunity, though, having spent the last three years in virtual oblivion on Tander’s World, counseling lonely miners on that desolate outpost. Here at last was civilization, of a sort. Though he doubted they had a ballet, or even space opera.
The shuttle braked with an intense, ear-splitting whine, the g-force pressing Jameson back into his seat once more. It lasted for about ten seconds, and then just as quickly the pressure eased. The shuttle settled down on the concrete landing pad with a shuddering sigh.
“Welcome to Oberon City,” the pilot said over the intercom, and the door irised open, extending stairs to the ground below. “Please be sure to take all your belongings with you, and enjoy this beautiful day.”
Jameson gathered his suitcase from beneath his seat, brushing some stray lint off his jacket, and clambered down the stairway into Oberon’s gilded light. He breathed in deeply. The planetary air smelled amazingly fresh after years of being locked up in tin cans, first on Tander’s World and then in the Arcatus on the trip here.
The wide-open horizon was intimidating too. He was disoriented by the broad expanse of green-tinted sky. This was all going to take some getting used to.
Hopefully he’d be safely back inside shortly.
XANDER LEANED back against his bike, stretching his arms and wings and enjoying the warmth of the sun that had finally peeked through the clouds. It was a beautiful day, a sharp contrast to the heavy rains of the day before.
He’d watched the shuttle land half an hour before, descending to the concrete pad just beyond the short squat rectangle of the immigration center and kicking up a cloud of dust.
Beyond the landing pad, one of the Rentz Class cargo carriers thundered into the sky on a tower of smoke and fire, carrying a load of amalite up to the waiting interstellar ship.
Xander called up Jameson Havercamp’s face again. His first impression had been right—the man was handsome enough. He needed to lose the suit and tie, but there was something about his brown eyes….
A few days on the dark side would shake him up.
At last, the doors to the immigration center irised open, and Havercamp came out, looking around at his destination, a twin to his photo. He looked as if he had just stepped out of an office instead of off a station shuttle.
Cuter in person. Xander strode forward to meet the psych, extending a hand. “Jameson Havercamp? I’m Xander Kinnson, at your service.”
“Hello, Mr.… Kinnson, was it?” He shook Xander’s hand with a nice firm grip while staring openly at Xander’s wings. “Yes, I’m Jameson Havercamp. So nice to meet you.”
Xander grinned. This one was going to need a lot of shaking up.
He took the other man’s suitcase and secured it to the rack on the back of his bike. “Hop on. We’ve got a lot to get done today.”
“Where’s the company transport?” Havercamp looked around, seeming confused.
“You’re looking at it.” He powered up the engine and gestured for the psych to climb on behind him.
“I’ve never ridden a hoverbike before.” He said the word as if he’d just stepped in something that was never going to come off his shiny leather shoes.
“If you’d rather walk….” Xander pointed off at the line of arcos on the horizon.
Havercamp heaved a sigh, but he complied, climbing up behind Xander.
Xander gunned the engine, just for the thrill of it.
The bike lifted up into the air and sped back toward the heart of the city.
Chapter Three: Exit Plan
XANDER’S BIKE flew over the crowded streets of Oberon City. It was midmorning, as far as Jameson could tell from the slanting rays of sunshine over the city.
The wind whipped through his hair, making a rat’s nest of it. He was going to look a mess when he arrived at the OberCorp Headquarters, but there was nothing to be done for it. He mollified himself with the thought that it was the company representative’s fault.
Jameson clung to Xander’s waist, uncomfortable at being so close to the other man, but terrified all the same to loosen his grip. The man’s wings settled in around him like a feathered blanket.
Xander Kinnson had wings—he was a skythane man.
Sure, the whole wings thing had been in the briefing, but reading it and seeing it in person were two very different things. They were beautiful, running up from his shoulder blades into the sky when he had them extended, and powerful. The dark feathers glimmered with an iridescent sheen in the sunlight.
Jameson didn’t think he would have the courage to fly—hoverbike flight was unnerving enough. And yet… wings.
They whipped past heavy armored transports and automated delivery trucks that rode the streets below them, mixed in with pedestrians and even some wagons and rickshaws, as strange an assortment of traffic as he had ever seen in one place.
“We’re going to Oberon Corp Headquarters, right?” he shouted at Xander over the noise. He hated shouting.
“What?” Xander shouted back.
“OberCorp Headquarters?”
“Sorry. Can’t hear you!”
Jameson gave up. He settled in to observe the city around him.
The huge arcos formed a virtual blue metallic wall ahead that began to block out the sunlight as the hoverbike moved closer. They were impressive in their uniformity, reminding him of the statues of Easter Island he’d visited during his trip to Old Earth.
From this vantage point, the city seemed much bigger than it had looked from the shuttle flying in, but outside of the impressive architecture of the arcos, the rest of Oberon City was made up of much less impressive, shorter buildings, with the tallest of these topping out around fifteen stories. They were in varied states of decay, with broken windows and rusted stanchions, some of them overrun by wild vines. The city looked like it was badly in need of an urban renewal project—a few buildings were in such bad shape that Jameson was amazed they hadn’t already collapsed under their own weight.
After about fifteen minutes, Xander’s bike slowly dipped down to the ground, coming to a landing between a couple of low buildings. They arrived at a nondescript three-story, concrete-slab structure that would have fit into almost any urban cityscape. It was made entirely out of prefab plascreet panels like all the other ugly buildings around it.
Xander palmed a sensor next to the metal roll-up door and it chugged up noisily, revealing a storage space maybe three meters wide by about three times that length deep. He pulled the bike inside and parked it, beckoning for Jameson to dismount.
Jameson did as he was told, though he was starting to get worried. When it came right down to it, he knew nothing about this man, having taken Xander at his word that he really was a representative of OberCorp.
How could he know for sure?
The idea nagged at him.
The man might be a pirate who preyed upon unsuspecting arrivals at the immigration center. He certainly fit the profile—standoffish, antisocial, certain he was always right. Jameson had seen that many times before in his practice. Then again, most sociopaths were more social.
At least he’d made it to the city now. It might be best to get out of here and find his own way to OberCorp.
Jameson started to back slowly out of the storage unit, away from Xander. He could make a run for it.
“Stay right there,” Xander said without turning, his voice sharp. “This is a bad part of town. It’s dangerous, especially for off-worlders who don’t know any better.”
Jameson looked out onto the street nervously.
Oberon City was a lot grittier at ground level than it had appeared from the shuttle—the pavement looked petrochemical based, and it was uneven and black, so different from the beautiful marble streets back on Beta Tau. Some dark fluid flowed in fits and starts down the gutters, and it gave off a nasty smell: part urine, part hydrocarbons, part rotting food.
He was overdressed for such squalor. “Are there any good parts?” He stepped back inside with a sniff.
Xander snorted. He’d set aside Jameson’s suitcase, and was now rummaging around through some plas containers at the back of the storage unit. He pulled out something and threw it over the back of the bike.
It looked like the saddlebags that Jameson’s parents used with horses on their estate to carry supplies or foodstuffs for picnics or hunting trips into the Holywood.
Xander pulled out a knife and used it to pry open Jameson’s suitcase, setting off the luggage’s alarm. Xander snarled and kicked it until the sound died down to an irritated chirp.
“Hey… what are you doing?” Jameson reached out to stop him, but Xander pushed him back, knife in hand. “You can’t wear that where we’re going.” He indicated Jameson’s clothing with the same disdain Jameson himself had used for the hoverbike. He rummaged through the clothes in the suitcase. “None of this will do.” Xander turned to size Jameson up, head to toe. “I think I have something that will work.” He returned to going through the bins at the back of the unit.
“What do you mean, this won’t do? I’ve met with upper-level management in the Psych Guild on numerous occasions, dressed just like this—”
“We’re not meeting with management.” Xander returned with an armful of clothes. “Here, put these on.”
“I must insist that you take me to OberCorp Headquarters right now and—”
Xander dropped the new clothes on the dirty floor and ripped Jameson’s button-down shirt right up the middle, exposing his bare chest. His wings flared out behind him, and he gave Jameson an evil grin. “Change. Now.”
Skythane Page 3