Skythane

by J. Scott Coatsworth

  He looked up at her with newfound respect. “It didn’t bother you?”

  She snorted. “I was sick to my stomach, like you were. Then I went home and cried about it for three days.”

  “But you got over it?” He’d counseled people before with difficult issues, and he had always told them that it took time to heal their wounds. Now he was starting to wonder if he had been a total idiot. This didn’t feel like something that would just go away, no matter how much time passed.

  Quince thought about it. “Mostly. I hope to, one day.” She stood. “It’s good that it hurts, though. It means you’re still human.” She offered her hand.

  “I guess that’s something.” He took her hand and stood up, wiping off his mouth with the back of his arm. “Let’s go.”

  “Are you ready?”

  “As ready as I’m going to get.” How did OberCorp track us down?

  He hopped back on the cycle behind her, and they took off toward the line of trees in the distance.

  XANDER RACED away from the destroyed truck, his cycle tracking the road out of Oberon City. Behind him, one of the hoversports followed, its gun turrets bristling menacingly. Quince and Jameson had taken a different direction, off southeast into one of the boxcorn fields. It would slow her down, but it also gave her some cover. He hoped the two of them would make it out of this all right. Whatever this was.

  Right now, he had himself to worry about.

  He poured on the speed, temporarily leaving the hoversport in his dust. On his right, the cornfields stretched off into the distance. On his left, the tall, silvery green gumba trees waved in the breeze, helping to block the worst of the winds from the fields beyond them.

  His speed was approaching 300 km an hour, but the hoversport was starting to catch up. He thought about dropping down into the fields too, but he didn’t want to bring “his” hoversport in Quince’s direction. He eased the pulse pistol out of his pants. “Ravi, take the wheel,” he said, tapping his cirq, but then he remembered that Ravi was gone. At least until he was able to return home and get a new cirq installed.

  It was strange not having a connection to the grid. He had gotten used to it over the last five years, and now he couldn’t decide if being without it was liberating or maddening. It would have been handy to have Ravi to autopilot for him right about now.

  He fired a shot over his shoulder, hoping to hit the hoversport, or at least make them drop back.

  When he glanced at it again, it was still right on top of him. He considered his options.

  They continued on like that for a couple minutes, a strange pair racing toward the Outland. Eventually, they would reach the zone where electronics fizzled out, but Xander didn’t think he could keep ahead of them for that long. Even if he could, it would still be three or four men to his one.

  He glanced back again. Why hadn’t they shot at him?

  A strange thought crossed his mind. Quince said they were after him in particular. Maybe they needed him alive, and in one piece. It would explain why they hadn’t tried to take him out.

  If so, that gave him some leverage.

  He tried to remember what lay ahead, casting his memory back to the last time he and Alix had come out here. They had done some wild shit together out here on their cycles. Xander had a slight advantage because of his wings—they allowed him to manage maneuvers that Alix was unable to match, and they might just save him now. If he remembered correctly, there was a bluff ahead that might work.

  Xander tapped his forehead, starting to query Ravi again about how far ahead that part of the terrain was, but nothing happened. He sighed. It was maddening. He would just have to wing it.

  He grinned.

  “Xander Kinnson. Pull over, or we’ll bring you down,” a loud voice boomed down from the hoversport, just over his head.

  He looked up. A pulse laser turret was pointed directly at him.

  Time to roll the dice.

  He held up a hand and extended his middle finger. Then he pushed the bike forward even faster.

  He braced himself for death, but no shot came. The ship continued to tail him.

  He grinned victoriously—he’d been right. They must have been ordered not to hurt him.

  At last, the place he was looking for was just ahead. The road cut through the edge of a hillside, curving in the process. If he timed it just right….

  Hoversports were made for air-to-ground combat. They were shielded underneath and all around, but they were vulnerable from above.

  It was perfect.

  He pulled off the road just a little, angling toward the bluff at a ninety-degree angle, glancing back to be sure the hoversport was still behind him. As the bike flew up the steep incline, he wrenched at the handlebars with his arms, his wings guiding him in a circle up into the air.

  In seconds, he had flipped himself around and was heading straight at the oncoming hoversport.

  His wings lifted him up above it and he passed neatly over the top. He tried to imagine the confusion inside the vehicle. In one smooth motion he pointed the pulse pistol down at the ship and fired into it, and then he was past it, flying through the air and descending toward the road, heading back in the direction he’d come.

  He got his bike down to the ground and pulled to a halt.

  He looked back.

  The hoversport was wreathed in fire and light as it slammed into the bluff, striking the ground hard and exploding into a million pieces.

  Xander blew imaginary smoke off the end of his pistol and tucked it back into his belt. It’d been a near thing, but now he was free.

  He looked back the way he’d come, considering going to help Quince. Then he thought better of it.

  She could take care of herself. Going back would only put him in more danger.

  Better to follow the original plan and strike out toward their meeting point.

  Chapter Six: Wereveren

  IT WAS late afternoon by the time they reached the edge of the forest, the true beginning of the Outland—or so Quince had told him. It still felt like midday. He had to remember that the days were shorter here.

  Far overhead, a shuttle arched down toward Oberon City in the distance, leaving a contrail across the green sky. There seemed to be more traffic lately between Titan Station and Oberon City. Something had stirred up the hornet’s nest.

  She guided the bike underneath the trees, leaving the last of the boxcorn fields behind.

  Jameson hoped Xander had come out all right against his own hoversport, but there was no way to know until he showed up at the rendezvous point.

  Not that Jameson really cared, but the man had risked himself to draw off one of the hoversports. For now, he just wanted a safe place for them to make camp, and to wash up. He still had a foul taste in his mouth from his nausea.

  Jameson looked around. Strange, thin trees topped by tufts of silver foliage loomed over them, inhabited by some kind of cooing animals. The air here smelled alien—sharp but sweet, perhaps scented by unknown blossoms, and untainted by the industrial wastes of Oberon City.

  It reminded him a little of the forests back home. Beta Tau had been fully terraformed from a lifeless ball of rock with Earth-normal flora and fauna.

  Yet this was also nothing at all like the forests he remembered. The shapes of the trees, the sounds of this alien forest, and the smells—they were all wrong.

  The late afternoon sunlight slanted down through the branches of the trees like it did at home, but it was a canopy filled with leaves of blue and silver. Strange things called out in the semidarkness, things that twittered and screeched and grumbled.

  They continued on through the woods for maybe half an hour, the cycle humming along over the forest floor. The shadows lengthened, and eventually Quince brought the bike to a halt beside a copse of the strange trees. They had skinny trunks, and their bark was silver like their leaves. They swayed back and forth in the slight breeze, their leaves making a sound like running water.

  Q
uince pulled off her helmet. “We’ll make camp here. We’ve got about an hour to set up before the wereveren find us.”

  Jameson dismounted from the bike, and Quince followed him.

  “Wereveren? That doesn’t sound good.”

  “They’re not bad, if you take precautions. If you don’t”—she steered the bike in-between the trees—“they’ll rip out your throat.”

  Jameson shivered. “So what do we need to do?”

  “I hope Xander has a deterrent field with him.” She pulled out a long rope she’d had tucked into her saddlebag. She handed one end to him. He held it up and looked at it in the sunlight. It consisted of three cables—red, blue, and green—wrapped in a translucent casing. Every three inches or so, the wires protruded from the casing to form a small loop. It reminded him of a strand of DNA, the way the wires wrapped around one another.

  Quince surveyed the clearing they were in. “We need to run this from tree to tree around this space.” She tied one end of the rope around a tall, thin trunk. “This one’s a silverbark. See the dark line on this side? That’s always the north-facing side.”

  Jameson looked up. The tree was impossibly thin and tall, and its first leaves were at least a hundred feet above the ground. “Silverbark. Got it.” He played out the rope as Quince ran it in a rough circle around them, encasing their sleeping space, wrapping it around the trunk of each tree. “So these… wherevers?”

  “Wereveren?”

  “Right, Wereveren. What are they?”

  “Little birds, about as big as your hand. But don’t let that fool you. They’re deadly.”

  He snorted. Killer birds? Seriously? “So what do we do when we reach the distortion zone, where little electronic gadgets like this don’t work to keep these… birds… out anymore?”

  She laughed. “Good question. We’ll figure that out when we get there.”

  Privately, Jameson wondered if this whole thing wasn’t simply a ruse to keep him in line. Maybe this rope was more a Jameson barrier than a wereveren one.

  Quince finished the circle, wrapping the excess rope around the original tree and snapping the ends of it together to complete the circuit. Jameson waited for a force field to spring up. Or maybe an electric sizzle of power.

  Nothing happened.

  “Is that it?” he asked, trying to keep the skepticism out of his voice.

  “Yup. Once the sun sets, stay within this circle, and you’ll be safe.” He could tell she’d heard his skepticism.

  His back was itching again. He rubbed his shoulder blades, but couldn’t seem to get at the spot.

  “You all right?” Quince asked, glancing over at him as he squirmed to reach it.

  “Yeah. Just an itch.” He looked around. “What now?”

  “It’s going to get chilly tonight. We’ll need fire to keep us warm, at least until we go to bed.”

  “We’re sleeping here?”

  “Of course. You don’t see a nice hotel anywhere nearby, do you?”

  He looked around at the dirty campsite and scowled. This was not how he’d thought this mission would go.

  Something howled off in the distance, sounding like a cross between a feral cat and a grizzly bear.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “We call them swamp bears. They’re harmless, though they can give you a nasty infection if one of them scratches you.”

  He sighed. “I had to ask.”

  “We’ve got another hour before sunset. Why don’t you go find some fuel for the fire? There’s a fungus that grows around the base of the trees here called croyol. It’s white, and usually about a hand’s width wide, like this….” She made the shape of a heart with her hands. “It burns without any smoke.”

  He nodded. “Got it. Heart fungus.” He stepped under the wire, looking around. Nothing happened.

  “Stay close enough to see the campsite,” Quince warned him. “I don’t want to have to come after you.”

  He nodded. The forest was beautiful for all its alien strangeness—the light slanted through the trees to make dappled silver-green patches on the fallen leaves. The sound of the wind through the leaves was calming, and it was comfortable enough here in the late afternoon shade. Maybe this wasn’t so bad, after all.

  He started to look for the fungus, checking the closest trees first, then moving farther off, every minute or so looking back at the camp.

  As he searched, a flock of pretty red birds alighted on a tree branch above him. At least, he thought they were birds. They were about the size of a crow, with wingspans about as wide as his forearm. Instead of feathers, they were covered in a fine red fur. They did have birdlike beaks, though, but instead of being yellow, they were black. Their feet clung to the branch like bird feet, and they sang a cheerful song as they watched him go by.

  If those were wereveren, he figured he could handle them.

  See? Not so bad. Then another strange growl sounded in the distance, and he shot a glance back at the campsite to make sure it was still there.

  He did not want to get lost and end up eaten by a swamp bear.

  QUINCE WATCHED Jameson go. The boy was far too confident in himself for his own good, especially out here in an alien environment.

  Then again, princes often were.

  She snorted. Soon she’d need to tell him the truth, but for now, she intended to let him get his ground legs. One thing a time.

  She went back to preparing the campsite, taking out a small spade and clearing a place in the center of the camp for a fire pit and lining it with rocks she found nearby. She looked up in the midst of her labor. Jameson had wandered about thirty meters from the camp. “Any luck?” she called.

  “Got a few. These ones, right?” He held up a small white heart.

  “Yup. Circle around a bit. You’ll probably find more over there where the trees are denser.”

  Quince was worried at the ease with which OberCorp had found them. Granted, they had still been close to Oberon City, but she’d been sure Rogan would do everything he could to keep their departure a secret. After all, the man had a hell of a lot to gain by keeping up his part of the deal.

  If he hadn’t given them up, then who?

  Would the company enforcers be able to track them down again?

  She spent the rest of the remaining daylight going over each of the items in her saddlebags, one by one, looking for some sign of a bug or tracker.

  Jameson returned with an armload of the fungus. She had him stack them up inside the perimeter and sent him out for more.

  Then she checked the bike.

  At last she found it. There was a dark patch on the underside of the headlight. She took out her knife and pried it off carefully. She held it up to the light. It was a trackpatch. She could see the circuitry inside the black metal cylinder. “Gotcha.”

  “What’s that?” Jameson said, returning with a second load of croyol.

  “This is how they tracked us.” She handed it to him.

  “That little thing?”

  She nodded. She wondered when they had affixed it to the hoverbike. Had it been attached during the initial fight over the city? That seemed unlikely.

  That left the warehouse. Had one of Rogan’s men done it, working for OberCorp?

  The thing sprouted wings and tried to jump out of his grasp. He closed his palm around it.

  “We should destroy it.” Jameson dropped it on the ground and lifted his heel.

  “Wait!” The boy was far too hasty.

  “What?”

  “Think about it. They already know where we are. What’s the first thing you would do if your tracking device suddenly stopped functioning?”

  “Send someone to find out why….” His face went pale. “Oh.”

  “Yes. Oh. So we’ll leave it for now and let them think we’re not onto them. Then in the morning, we can dispose of it before we leave. Let’s hope they don’t come tonight.”

  Jameson nodded. “That makes sense. We should find something mo
ving to attach it to. Throw them off the trail.”

  “Good idea.” The boy was no fool, at least.

  He handed it back to her carefully, and she broke off the wings. “In the meantime, we take turns mounting a guard. Just in case they make a move tonight.” She was relieved to have found the tracker, but something still bothered her.

  Why was OberCorp going to all this trouble to find them? Was it related to Robyn’s news of the invasion?

  No sense worrying about it now, she supposed. In a few days, they would be beyond the reach of OberCorp and the Syndicate. In the meantime, she’d keep her guard up.

  THE SUN had set an hour or so before, and the strange wood had only grown more disquieting to Jameson. The swamp bears had apparently gone to sleep, but now the forest was filled with more vicious cries—a kind of high-pitched howling—and gut-wrenching screams that sounded like something was getting its guts ripped out.

  Jameson huddled on a rock by the fire, sipping a warm mug of cafflite, this world’s sorry excuse for coffee. Was that small bit of human comfort really too much to ask?

  An MRE was cooking on the fire for him, and another for Quince. He’d chosen beef stew, though he hadn’t seen any cows here since he’d arrived. He suspected it was synth-meat, but hungry was hungry.

  He was still trying to figure out how, in the course of just twelve hours, his life had been turned entirely upside down—how he’d found himself camping in an alien forest in a broken world with an angel.

  As a child, he’d dreamed of flight. Everyone did—it was a classic subconscious symbol of the yearning for freedom. Psych 101.

  Xander, though…. Something about the man’s casual disdain combined with the dark beauty of his black wings…. Jameson wondered what it would feel like to have his own, to be able to soar up and away, above everything. Away from everyone.