by Magus Tor
“Come on, tell me,” she demanded, as soon as they were somewhere they could hear themselves speak.
“I don't know all the details,” he said. “Why don't we go up to the office? Your mother will know more than I.”
He started walking, and Aurelia had no choice but to follow him. By the time they arrived at the office, her mother was already there.
“Good news,” she said as they walked in.
“But how was it done?” asked Aurelia, pulling up a chair.
“I suspect that Jonathon has been organising this for a few days,” Nicholas said, sitting too. “Right?” he asked Sasha.
“Sounds like it,” the older woman said.
“Didn't you notice that the outlying islands we captured weren't always the ones right next to each other?” Nicholas asked Aurelia. “Jonathon was surrounding the central islands with safe bases, and then he used those bases to mount an attack from all sides. Well, that's my guess,” he said, turning to Aurelia's mother.
“From what I hear, yes, that's more or less what happened,” Sasha said. “And worse yet, the Empire Army weren't stationed in full force in the centre; they were divided up to fight on the outlying islands, assuming that we were going to capture one island at a time. Which meant when the real battle happened, a solid half of them were behind enemy lines. Smart.”
“Very,” said Nicholas, which just made Aurelia think that it had been his plan all along.
“So what now?” she asked.
She noticed that Nicholas turned to her mother and got a quick nod before continuing.
“Well, with 02 as a solid base, we'll turn to other Cities,” he said. “I suspect that a fair few of the 02 forces are going to be sent here to 05, the others to 03. 03 should be an easy fight, particularly if we reach the island before the Elite Army. 05, though—that's a different matter. This is going to be a tough one, not least because we'll have to fight in the heat.”
“And without a leader,” Aurelia pointed out, knowing that her father had assumed control of all forces coming through 05.
“Oh, I don't think we're without a leader in 05,” said Nicholas. “Do you, Sasha?”
Aurelia looked at her mother, who nodded at her.
“Who? You?” asked Aurelia in astonishment.
“Yes,” she said simply. “I'm continuing your father's work as best I can.”
“It makes sense,” Nicholas said. “I assume there was little that Stefan didn't share with you, and we don't have the time to bring anyone new up to date. Besides, the forces here seem to like and respect you.”
“Jonathon has already given his approval,” Aurelia's mother said.
“Then we have another cause for celebration,” said Nicholas, smiling. “Though to be honest, I could use something to eat. Do you ladies care to join me?”
“We'll be right behind you,” said Sasha.
Nicholas caught the hint and excused himself.
“So?” Aurelia's mother asked her, after he'd left.
“Mum, I...” She took a breath. “Are you sure?”
Sasha nodded. “This is the best way I can think of to honour your father's memory,” she said. “Don't get me wrong, Aurelia. I'm as devastated as you are. I feel like I've lost half of myself. But I also know that this is what he wanted. We spoke of what would happen if either of us was lost. We knew the risks, we always did. When you were small it was harder. It would have been difficult to be a single parent and still able to travel when I needed to. But now, now I know exactly what I have to do.”
Aurelia nodded. “I understand,” she said.
“Thank you,” her mother said, smiling at her.
Aurelia got up. “I think I'm going to grab a sonic shower before eating. Is it okay if I meet you down there?”
“Sure. And Aurelia?”
“Mmm?”
“Know that your father loved you very, very much. And that he was extremely proud of you. I know he would say these things himself if he could.”
Safe in the sonic shower, Aurelia allowed herself a few more tears. Sometimes she was fine, sometimes not. Unbelievably, she could forget for minutes at a time that her father was gone; but then she remembered, and it was like hearing the news for the first time all over again.
When she had let out the emotion, she washed herself, exited the shower, and began to dress as she thought about her mother.
Who would have thought that her mother would be the one to lead the 05 battle? Aurelia still couldn't quite believe it. Women were not fighters, hadn't been since the last War. It was nothing to do with sexism—if anything, the Empire had always equalised work between men and women, wanting as much productivity as possible. No, it was a simple matter of population control.
Women had fought in the Great War and had proven fearsome, efficient soldiers. But women had also died in great numbers. This had left the problem of repopulating the Earth, particularly problematic given the existing fertility issues. In the end, women had been forgiven all Military duties, though low-level security work was allowed. There were no female Clones—only male embryos were used, the others destroyed.
At least, Aurelia thought, that means that I have fewer worries about my mother leading forces than I do about Jonathon doing the same thing. She felt the tears pricking her eyes again. Losing her father was bad enough; she couldn't even begin to imagine what losing Jonathon would be like. And yet that was exactly what her mother was going through.
The men were still in high spirits when Aurelia made it down to the canteen. It took her a solid five minutes of searching to spot Nicholas in the crowd, and she finally found him surrounded by other Clones. When she caught his eye, he said his goodbyes and came to her, handing her a ration box when they found an empty table.
“It's not the best food I've ever eaten,” he said as she opened the box. “But then, it's not the worst either.”
She'd eaten ration boxes before and knew that the food was designed more for its portability and nutrition than for its taste. But she had to eat, so she began unwrapping the small packages.
“Nicholas,” she said, “when are you leaving for 01?”
He pursed his lips in thought. “Well, I've got a few things to check out here. I need to talk to your mother and the squad commanders about tactics. I can get a fair amount of that done this evening and tomorrow, though. So probably tomorrow evening. Best to get it done, and the sooner we fly out of here, the safer we'll be. There are Elite troops massing around 05 even as we speak.”
“Tomorrow evening then,” she said, biting into what was possibly supposed to be a sandwich but tasted like cardboard.
He nodded. “I haven't spoken to anyone yet about escorting you out. But it's safe to say that someone will be going to 02. Jonathon should be there for at least another day or so stabilising things before moving off to one of the other Cities to fight again.”
That was not was she was thinking at all. Aurelia swallowed her mouthful. “I think,” she said, “that I'd rather come with you. If you don't mind, that is.”
Nicholas eyed her. She could see that he was wondering why she'd want to go all the way to 01 with him rather than return to Jonathon.
“I guess it's okay,” he said finally. “Er...I don't want to interfere, but have you cleared this with Jonathon?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. I wanted to talk to him before, but I couldn't get through.”
“Do you want to tell me why you don't want to go back to 02? You don't have to if you don't want.”
Aurelia sighed. “I just can't right now. Nicholas, I've just lost my father. I can't go and watch Jonathon risk his life day after day. I'm not ready for that. I understand he's doing what he has to do, but I just don't want to watch it right now. Does that sound stupid?”
He shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “And to be honest, it's probably better that you come to 01 anyway. There's no telling when they're going to be moving on to another City, and it doesn't make sense to have
you taken to 02 just to have to go all the way somewhere else the next day. I can talk to Jonathon if you want. I'll get a secure line to him after dinner, make my reports, and then you can have a talk with him when I'm done.”
She nodded gratefully. “Thank you.”
Nicholas shrugged. “All in a day's work. You going to finish that sandwich?”
Aurelia looked down at the half-eaten cardboard lying on top of her ration box. “Nah,” she said. “You have it.”
Jonathon was understanding and sympathetic, but Aurelia also knew that he was distracted, and she didn't blame him for it. After speaking with him, she found that she could sleep and spent a dreamless night getting the rest that she needed.
Before she could leave the caverns, there was one more task she had to do. Late the next afternoon she went to her father's burial site. Deep underground, in an area where there was soft earth rather than stone, a memorial had been set up. Lights burned, flickering in the rocky inlet. Bending down, Aurelia could think of nothing to say. Or rather couldn't think of the words to say everything that she wanted. So she simply sat for a while, her hand on the cool stone marked with her father's name. When she felt ready, she stood and left.
Her mother was waiting to wish them goodbye. She gave Aurelia a lengthy hug and told her to look after herself.
“You too, Mum,” said Aurelia. “And...well, and I'm proud of you. I can't think of anyone better to continue Father's work.”
Her mother nodded sadly, then kissed Nicholas on both cheeks. “Try and get a secure com line through when you arrive. Let me know you got there safely,” she said.
“Yes, ma'am,” said Nicholas, picking up his bag, heavy again with a new battery for their transport pod.
As they were walking back up through the tunnel, they passed a group of soldiers coming in, one of whom obviously knew Nicholas.
“Leaving so soon?” he asked.
“Work calls,” said Nicholas with a grin.
“Well, then,” responded the man, “meet you in 01.”
“Meet you in 01,” chorused the rest of the men in the group, jostling their way down the corridor and to food.
“Meet you in 01?” asked Aurelia. “Surely they're not all coming?”
Nicholas laughed. “No,” he said. “It's become their rallying cry over the last few hours. They know that 01 will be the most difficult City to take and therefore will be the last to be taken. They see ‘meet you in 01’ as a form of good luck.”
“Hoping that you survive until the end,” said Aurelia, understanding.
“Something like that.”
The tunnel was coming to an end, and Aurelia could already smell the scent of the desert air outside. A breeze was stirring, and she shivered a little. Stepping out into the night, she slid a little over the small stones surrounding the entrance, then walked out from under the two towers. To her right she could see the low burn of lights in 05, to her left nothing but deep darkness. She sighed.
“Ready to get out of here?” Nicholas asked, coming up behind her.
“Ready,” she said.
He pulled out his screen, illuminating it so that he could see his route. “We're going to need to travel in complete darkness,” he said. “There are too many recon parties around here. We can't risk being seen by anyone.”
“And just how are we supposed to walk through the desert at night?” Aurelia asked.
“Don't worry,” Nicholas said, grinning.
He pulled a long length of rope out of his pack and began tying it around Aurelia's pack, then to his own.
“Try to stay as close to me as possible,” he said. “But if anything happens, we're tied together so neither of us can get lost.”
“And what happens if you get lost?”
He laughed. “I won't. I studied celestial navigation—I'll be fine. If I can navigate in space, I can certainly navigate on land. Don't worry.”
He put on his pack, and Aurelia turned to take one last look at the caverns. “Meet you in 01,” she whispered to nobody and everybody. Then they began the walk to the pod.
Chapter Eight
The walk was easier than Aurelia had expected. Nicholas did indeed know how to navigate extremely well, and ended up getting them to the transport pod in just a couple of hours. Considering that it was pitch black, Aurelia considered this no mean feat. He then proceeded to change the pod battery with his one hand, again in the dark. She shook her head in wonder as she waited, hearing rather than seeing what he was doing.
“Alright, we're good to go now,” said Nicholas, standing up and brushing the sand off his knees.
She threw her pack into the pod and climbed up after it, Nicholas following her. “Are we having another of those rocket take-offs?” she asked, wanting to be more prepared this time.
He laughed. “Not this time. We don't have the energy to waste. It's a long way to 01. We'll just hope that there's no one close enough to shoot us down.”
“Great,” said Aurelia, rolling her eyes. “You fill me with confidence.”
“You know you're in safe hands,” he said with a snort of derision. “Besides, I have this.” He held up a small tubular object.
“What is it?”
“The fuse that controls all the lights in the pod. Without it, we won't glow like a beacon in the night. It'll be tough to shoot us down if they can't see us.” He put the fuse back in his pocket.
“Okay, okay,” said Aurelia. “You have my apologies. I should know better than to think that you don't have every eventuality covered.”
Nicholas had been playing with the control console, and as she spoke the pod gently lifted into the air, sand swirling around it. It steadied for a moment and then took off, climbing as it flew away from City 05.
“I'm not sure I've got every eventuality covered,” Nicholas admitted, once they were underway. “There is the small problem of getting into 01. Though I'm sure I'll think of something before we get there.”
“I should hope so,” Aurelia said, switching positions so that she was more comfortable. “What's the problem with 01?”
Nicholas ruffled his hair with his hands. “01 has always been the most heavily guarded of Cities,” he explained. “It used to be the only City with a Lunar shuttle bay, which means that a lot of important people went through 01, still do. 01 remains the best place to use to get to Lunar. The trip is shorter, for a start. 01 also had the most problems with Outliers, so there's another reason.”
“Outliers?” asked Aurelia, sure she'd heard the word before but unable to quite place it.
“Those who were left outside the City once the fences were put up,” Nicholas said. “For whatever reason—maybe because 01 was in a heavily populated area in the first place—they had more work to do when it came to protecting the safety of their City. Anyway, the point is that getting into 01 is a nightmare. And then there's another small problem.”
Aurelia looked at him and groaned. “Don't tell me,” she said. “We don't have enough energy to get there?”
“You sound like Elza,” he accused. “I'm pretty sure we have enough to get close. But the charging facilities in the caverns weren't exactly top notch. The battery says it's holding a full charge, but whether it is or not, I'm not sure. But we couldn't fly into the City itself, anyway. We'd be stopped in a second.”
“So we need a plan.” Aurelia shrugged.
She'd become used to the idea of needing a plan to do pretty much anything these days. Besides, one had always appeared when she'd needed one, so she wasn't overly concerned. Nicholas was smart—he'd come up with something, she was sure.
He grunted. “I'm worried about the no man's land between where we can safely land and where the City begins,” he said. “It's tough to get over there. I've been trying to contact someone I trust in the 01 Resistance, but so far he hasn't got back to me.”
“You could just get Jonathon to intervene,” Aurelia said. “Or call the leader of the 01 Resistance himself. He could pull strings a
nd get us in.”
“I'm loath to do that,” Nicholas said, leaning back in his seat to stretch his legs out. “I'm not entirely sure that the 01 leader can be trusted. It seems that he's holding back on us, not sending all the men he has because he wants to use them to take 01. Plus, he's mad that we didn't take 01 first, since he obviously thinks it's the most important City.”
“It is,” Aurelia said, feeling a pang of patriotism for her old home City. “But I can see why it would be difficult to attack.”
“On the whole, I'd rather go in incognito if possible,” continued Nicholas. “I think we'll be safer, and we'll be more flexible. Better able to follow our own agenda.”
“Such as tracking down a certain young man?” asked Aurelia, arching her eyebrows.
“Exactly,” said Nicholas.
“I hope you've got a better plan for that than you've got for trying to get us into 01,” she said.
“I've got more than I had a few days ago.”
Nicholas had been quite the detective, it turned out. The first thing he’d done was to access the database from Lunar and then Lunar Hospital. This gave him Elza's personal number, but their hiring records also told him her original number, since her current number now reflected her residence in Lunar City rather than her birth number.
Logically, her younger brother would have the same birth number as Elza, though ending in a 4 whilst Elza's would end in a 3. Nicholas had accessed the database for City 01, tracking down what he assumed would be Mattias's number. And that's where he’d run into problems.
“His number must have been changed,” Nicholas said. “There are a bunch of reasons why it could have been, but without some kind of lead as to what his new number is, I'm having a hell of a time trying to find out what's happened to him.”
It made sense. Given that a person's number reflected his or her location—in that it was made up of a series of digits that told the reader exactly which City, which block, which building, and even which living pod in a building someone lived in, as well as whether they were the primary family member (a number 1), a wife (2), or a child (3, occasionally a 4)—that number could change at any time. Move living spaces because of a job change or promotion, and your number would change. Moving happened only very rarely, though. Mostly numbers changed due to people pairing or to children leaving home.