D'Arc

by Robert Repino

  “Attention on deck,” one of the humans shouted. The officers waited for him. While the animals were of indeterminate ages, the humans were astonishingly young. The barrel-chested man who saluted Falkirk must have been in elementary school when the war started.

  “Sir, Lieutenant Ryan Ruiz,” the man said. “Acting commander of the Vesuvius while she is in airdock.”

  In the name of the Prophet, a lieutenant in charge of all this? Then again, Falkirk was merely a lieutenant as well. No one wanted to say out loud that the people most qualified to save Hosanna lay at the bottom of the river.

  “I relieve you, sir,” Falkirk said.

  “I stand relieved.” His hand dropped to his side. “Sir, may I introduce the bridge crew?”

  “Please.”

  The officers went through the motions, stating their names, ranks, and responsibilities. Ruiz would serve as Executive Officer for the trip. Falkirk hesitated to ask him how many flight hours he had logged. Lieutenant Charlotte O’Neill served as operations officer, in charge of the navigation and propulsion systems. She had pink skin, with freckles and auburn hair tied in a bun, like some doll for human children. Next to her, the pilot, Ensign Thomas Unoka, towered over all of them, so thin he appeared ready to topple over. While O’Neill and Ruiz wore American flag patches on their sleeves, Unoka wore one that Falkirk did not recognize. Maybe a country in Africa, judging from his name. Considering the bloodbath that had taken place across the sea, Falkirk decided not to ask.

  The German shepherd introduced himself as Church, the security officer. When the time came, his team would try to kill Taalik and his mates. A gun with an enormous barrel hung from his belt, far too heavy for a typical human to wield. Falkirk detected in his yellow eyes a hint of the trigger-happy fury that his brother Wendigo possessed. He was surprised this dog hadn’t named himself Stab or Gash or something. The orangutan introduced herself as Bulan, the communications specialist. Her face sagged, weighing down the sockets on her enormous brown eyes. She handed him a palm-sized walkie-talkie, which he clipped to his jacket.

  “Let’s start the inspection,” Falkirk said.

  The officers escorted him on board. A crew member greeted him in the airlock by blowing a whistle. “Vesuvius arriving,” the man said. They entered the enormous oval-shaped promenade, the common area where the floor, walls, and ceiling gleamed a blinding white. A crescent-shaped amphitheater stood empty at the far end of the room. One of Falkirk’s classmates at flight school described the ship as a cheesy version of the future, like a giant walk-in smart phone. At the center of it all, a fountain bubbled in a small patch of perfectly manicured grass.

  Ruiz led the tour through engineering, a cramped, noisy room in the stern. The three crew members stood at attention while Ruiz rattled off the enhancements made to the monitoring system. To demonstrate his familiarity with this section of the ship, Falkirk asked when the last time the kill switches for the engines had been inspected. To his surprise—and relief—Ruiz said that he changed them himself the week before.

  They proceeded to the lower decks. While the chapel remained unchanged, most of the living quarters for the humans had been converted into storage areas and science labs. At the end of the long corridor, near the bow, stood a metal door with a wheel attached to the front. “The prisoner goes here,” Church said, a growl in his voice. “If anyone tampers with the door, the computer will seal the entire bulkhead. Only the captain’s order can reopen it.” The dog rapped his knuckles on the metal to demonstrate its thickness.

  On the bridge, a horseshoe-shaped window provided a 180-degree view of the city and the wilderness beyond. Cold steel railings, molded plastic chairs, and see-through floor grates gave the room a functional yet sterile feel, more like a cellblock than a command center. The bridge had a two-tier design. Ensign Unoka and his copilot sat in the lower level, facing the front window of the gondola. The command crew operated their workstations on the level above and slightly behind them. The stations formed a half-circle—navigation, communication, a direct link to engineering, a tactical display, radar. A captain’s chair sat in the middle, with a digital tablet fastened to the armrest and a podium bolted to the floor beside it.

  When the security team had removed him from this same bridge—when they pried his fingers from the railing—Falkirk was confused and broken. He returned this time a true follower of Michael, who had pulled him from the abyss. And because of all that, he careened from total astonishment to smug acceptance and back again.

  “Captain,” Ruiz said. “The change of command protocol mandates that you declare the inspection over. Unless, of course, you had some concerns?”

  “Everything is fine,” Falkirk said. “The inspection is complete. Good job, everyone.” The crew seemed genuinely relieved to hear the news. O’Neill released a long breath that puffed out her cheeks. The orangutan smiled with enormous yellow teeth.

  “Look,” Falkirk said. “We don’t know each other. And I realize you’ve been given a difficult task here. If anyone feels uncomfortable with me coming aboard, you can leave. No questions asked. I’ll list it in my report as a request for transfer to the Upheaval, nothing more.”

  They lowered their heads. And then, one by one, they turned to Ruiz. “Sir, we’ve already discussed this,” he said. “Two people deserted. But we’re staying. No matter what.” Beside him, the orangutan nodded and grinned.

  “I promise you I’m going to keep us safe,” Falkirk said. “We all have people waiting for us. Now, what’s the scheduled departure time?”

  “0700, sir.”

  Too little time to prepare, not enough time to kill. Falkirk couldn’t resist hoping that Mort(e) would say no, canceling the mission altogether.

  “All right,” he said. “I need a full report on the efficiency of the solar batteries. My guess is they haven’t been checked in a while.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Bulan, we won’t be able to communicate with Hosanna once we’re out of range. I want you to see if you can detect any signals from the wolf territories. They might have a tower.”

  “The wolf territories?”

  “We’re just going to listen. But we might have to call on them for help. Or to warn them.”

  He gave each of them some mundane report to process, simply to show that he knew his way around the ship. They went off to their workstations.

  While the officers and crew prepped for takeoff, Falkirk had little to do beyond strolling through the decks and surprising people. Kitchen workers in the galley, custodians polishing the pews in the chapel, machinists testing the airlocks—all of them stumbled over themselves to salute him. And then there were a few crew members whom he recognized from his last time on board, including a beady-eyed man with a neck tattoo, and another man with thick glasses. They knew who he was. He could tell. Word would spread throughout the entire crew, assuming they didn’t know already.

  To get his mind off things, Falkirk killed another twenty minutes talking to Unoka about the helm controls, to see if there were any problems with the old equipment. Unoka told him that the replacement parts were working just fine. “Anything else I can do for you, Captain?” the ensign asked, eyebrows raised.

  Falkirk’s walkie-talkie came to life, startling him. “Captain, this is Church. Come in.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Sir, Tranquility is here to deliver the prisoner. Please meet us on the flight deck.”

  “On my way.”

  On deck, Church and four human guards stood in a row, casting long shadows in the late-afternoon sun. Standing apart from their neat little formation, D’Arc waited with her hands folded behind her back. The sight of her almost made Falkirk stop in his tracks, but he pressed on, pretending he expected to see her. At the elevator, another troop of guards formed a wall around Mort(e). Metal cuffs bound the cat’s ankles and wrists. Church signaled for the
prisoner to come forward. Mort(e) could take only small steps in his chains. The guards matched his pace.

  D’Arc stood beside Falkirk. “That didn’t take long,” he whispered.

  “Mort(e) said yes right away.”

  “He didn’t try to haggle?”

  “He had one request.”

  She opened a pouch on her belt, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and handed it to him. Falkirk opened it and read the first line: “Subject: Transfer of Officer.” He skipped to the bottom to find the chief’s signature and paw print.

  “He asked that I come along,” D’Arc said. “He wants me to see him do the right thing.” There was a bitterness in her voice, something he had never before detected. Mort(e) had outmaneuvered her, to maximize whatever guilt he thought she should feel for leaving him.

  “So . . . permission to come aboard?” she said.

  “Yes, permission granted. We’ll get your quarters ready as soon as possible.”

  Mort(e) and his jailers arrived at the base of the stairs. D’Arc moved aside to give them room. After the German shepherd searched Mort(e) by hand, his guards surrounded the prisoner, ready to march him to his cell.

  “Wait,” Falkirk said. He stepped between the guards and stood face-to-face with the monster who killed the Prophet. Mort(e) seemed smaller in his cuffs, but no less dangerous.

  “I’m grateful you’re doing this,” Falkirk began. “We all are.”

  “Yes.” A gust of wind blew Mort(e)’s ears back.

  “I need you to know something,” Falkirk said. “We’re going along with the Sarcops. But we don’t trust them. We don’t trust you, either. The chief has given me full discretion to fire on your position at the first hint of trouble.”

  The cat did not respond. He didn’t even blink.

  “In other words, if you do anything to jeopardize the safety of my crew, I swear I’ll kill you.”

  Mort(e) tilted his head toward Falkirk. “You swear to the Prophet?”

  A searing heat exploded in Falkirk’s gut. He clamped down on it, controlled it. He would save it for later. “I swear to the pack that raised me. I swear it on the graves of my children and my mate. I swear it on the life of the person you and I both love.”

  The cat pondered this. He then turned to D’Arc. “I like him!” he said, laughing. She would not join in. “Now take me to my cell.”

  The guards escorted Mort(e) through the corridors and into the promenade, the same compartment where Mort(e) was once greeted as a savior. Falkirk asked D’Arc to wait by the fountain while they brought the prisoner the rest of the way. She did not object. Mort(e) stayed focused on the corridor ahead. At the end of the hall, two sentries guarded at the cell. Mort(e) shuffled inside, and the heavy door locked behind him.

  Falkirk returned to the common area. Standing on the grass, D’Arc craned her neck as she examined the architecture of the room—the fountain, the amphitheater, the windows, the track lights on the floor and the curved ceiling. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She shook her head yes. Then no. A painful silence followed. And then, overcome, D’Arc wrapped her arms around Falkirk’s neck and buried her face into his chest, right on his captain’s star.

  “I thought I was strong and I’m not,” she said, her voice muffled.

  “You’re strong.”

  She pulled away from him and tried to compose herself. “He’s not even doing this for me. He doesn’t care anymore. He wants to get himself killed.”

  “That’s not your fault.”

  A strong wind shook the airship, causing the floor to tilt before leveling off again.

  “Is there anything I can do on this ship?” she asked. “I want to be useful. Even if it’s cooking in the galley.”

  “Well, we don’t serve Alpha meat.”

  As always, she failed to get his joke. Which, strangely, made him feel better.

  “Church could use you on the security team,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you the armory. That ought to cheer you up.”

  They walked through the promenade, though at a wider distance than Falkirk wanted. Despite that, he imagined that they looked normal together, like longtime friends. To fill the silence, he daydreamed about ordering Unoka to steer the Vesuvius east, toward the ocean. They wouldn’t need the al-Rihla. Let Hosanna sink into the sea behind them. They would keep flying over the blue water and never mention this place again. He let the idea pass through him, like a warm wave. By the time they reached the corridor, he had returned to his senses, determined to die for everyone on this ship if he had to.

  Falkirk arrived at the bridge the next morning at 0630. The sun hid behind the horizon, and the overhead lights were still in night mode, coloring the room red. Among the frantic crew members, he caught Bulan yawning, her mouth opening so wide that it exposed her pink throat. The moment she saw him, she snapped her jaw shut and fixed her headset.

  “Attention on deck,” Ruiz said.

  “Carry on,” Falkirk said. The daytime lights switched on. Falkirk walked past O’Neill as she directed three crew members to their posts. Unoka and his copilot took a break from checking the controls to glance at the new captain.

  Falkirk approached Ruiz. “Are we on schedule?”

  “Yes, sir. The coordinates are logged into your tablet. Winds out of the southeast, but they won’t affect the launch. Should have good visibility through the entire trip.”

  Falkirk tapped the screen and scrolled through the inventories and the engine reports. With all the commotion on the bridge, he needed to appear busy. So far, the crew seemed up to the task, despite the trauma of the last couple of weeks. The night before, Falkirk attended a dinner with the officers in the wardroom. The meal consisted of bean soup with salted tofu and a spinach salad. The cooks provided bread and cheese, which only the humans ate. Ruiz explained that they might as well eat the food before it spoiled. The lieutenant’s awkwardness made Falkirk realize that only humans had served on the senior staff before the flood. It required a catastrophe to get two dogs and an orangutan promoted this high.

  Falkirk asked about their backgrounds. O’Neill and Ruiz were civilians before the war, and only in Hosanna did they have a chance to work their way through the ranks. O’Neill had served on the Upheaval before getting transferred a few months earlier. Ruiz took part in the failed pacification of the wolf territories. He kept his description of it simple, but everyone knew that he must have seen some terrible things.

  Unoka flew planes loaded with relief supplies for the United Nations. When the North African front collapsed, he took a plane full of refugees to Cape Verde, where they hid for most of the war.

  As Falkirk expected, Bulan had escaped from a zoo. With a mouth full of the leafy salad, she said that she tried to free the other animals, but only the lions left with her. The rest insisted on waiting for the zookeepers to deliver the next meal.

  Church related a more subdued story. His owner was a retired police officer who rescued German shepherds who failed to qualify for the K-9 unit. Had it not been for his master’s intervention, Church would have been put to sleep because he wasn’t mean enough.

  “You weren’t mean enough?” O’Neill asked.

  “Don’t tell anyone,” Church said. Everyone laughed. The moment of levity drew out more stories, more banter, until finally Bulan addressed Falkirk.

  “This is the first time we have done this, sir,” she said. “We have not gathered together to talk like this. I see we needed to.” Everyone agreed.

  The dinner would be the only opportunity to bond before setting out. And with the sun finally cracking open the sky, Falkirk suddenly remembered that he had refrained from sharing his own story. And even if he told them, he would have left out the only parts that mattered. During the war, his commanding officer often said,
“You are the master over someone who has told you his story.” It was a miserable, cynical proverb that the Colony helped to spread. Nevertheless, it made sense here.

  Ruiz gave the signal that the ship was ready. Falkirk nodded. “Com?”

  “Liberty One Tower says we are cleared for takeoff,” Bulan said.

  “Release the mooring cables. Helm, take us to three hundred.”

  “Aye aye, captain.”

  The tethers broke free one at a time. The air thundered through the propellers. As the ship lifted, a gust of wind rocked it slightly. Falkirk pretended not to notice his podium wobble. The ship rotated, shifting the rising sun to the starboard window.

  “Three hundred feet, sir,” Unoka said. “We have cleared the tower.”

  “Course laid in,” O’Neill said, tapping away at a keyboard.

  The city dropped out of view, leaving only the purple, cloudless sky like an ocean flipped upside down. Falkirk stared into it and wondered if all he had seen, and what he had become, would be enough to get him through this.

  “Take us to wolf country,” he said.

  The ship accelerated. Falkirk clutched the podium to keep from falling over.

  CHAPTER 22

  Triangulation

  The interrogation room sat at the end of a quiet hallway in Tranquility headquarters, tucked behind a storage closet that no one used. Grissom led the way, carrying manila folders under his arm. Wawa and Daiyu Fang walked behind him. A canine guard waited for them at the door. With a gloved hand, the dog knocked once before opening it.

  A musty smell greeted Wawa as she entered, like mildewed wood and cracked leather. The room had no windows, only a checkered linoleum floor with a metal table bolted to it. Carl Jackson leaned against a wall, spit cup in hand. A human soldier stood in the far corner wearing sunglasses and holding a rifle.