by Karen Bao
I walk backward to my seat, footsteps loud in the suddenly silent hall.
Did I really do that? I feared the words wouldn’t come, but they did—entire sentences.
Conversations begin around the hall, but the voices sound different. Quiet. Respectful.
Wes squeezes my shoulder. “You didn’t just say all those words for their benefit, did you? Did you mean them?”
I’ll miss making bread with Nanna Zeffie, playing hide-and-seek with Emmy and Julie, walking along the cliff side with Murray as she sprinkles flour into the bacterial lights. I might have chafed at their religion and their rules, but I can’t allow Pacifia to destroy the Odans’ way of life the way the Committee destroyed my family’s.
Family. Wes shouldn’t have to see his suffer the way I did mine. I remember his face, lit by the sunset on our submarine; his voice, when he told me how much he loves them.
“I’ll go back to Saint Oda with you,” I say quietly. I doubt I can do much to fight Pacifia, but it’s almost entirely my fault that the hegemon is attacking the island in the first place. Could I bear the guilt if I left Wes’s city to burn?
“Really? But Cygnus—”
At the sound of my little brother’s name, I cringe. Visions of his torture tug at the invisible ropes pulling me upward, back toward the Moon.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Wes whispers. He sounds happy that I’m accompanying him. Or am I imagining it? My heart sinks in my chest like an anchor, heavy and sharp.
“Cygnus . . .” I say, “will have to wait a few days longer.” I’ll use the time to brainstorm a real plan to save him, to compose a mental list of allies and safe hiding places on Base IV.
Wes gives me a quick one-armed hug, and my decision is cemented. He’s saved my life twice over. I can’t return to my home until I’m sure he still has one.
Parliament’s discussion has concluded, and legislators are voting on whether to send a dozen fighter jets to Saint Oda. It’s the starting point for military aid. On one side of the sphere, a scoreboard of sorts keeps track of the numbers. On the forward-facing side of each balcony, a glass bulb lights up as the representative sends in his or her vote: green for yes, red for no, yellow for abstain. My pulse thrums; I can’t bear to watch. But when I close my eyes, the backs of my eyelids make everything look red.
“It’s all okay now.” Someone taps me on the shoulder—Costa’s aide, the woman with the grassy eyelashes. Shuddering, I risk a look—and see green has triumphed by a slim margin: 235–226.
Relief floods through me. Wes is hugging himself, thanking God under his breath.
Battery Bay will send help, even if it’s only a dozen planes. It’s something. But perhaps not enough. The thought puts an end to my relief. The entire city of Pacifia will invade Saint Oda, and soon. Our submarine’s satellite-generated map indicated that it would take only two and a half days’ travel for Pacifia to reach the archipelago. And that was this morning.
Minister Sear gives Wes and me a satisfied smile and sits down between us. “Excellent. We’ll wait twenty-four hours, then, for the referendum to move the city.”
Twenty-four hours? Battery Bay will need at least thirty-six to travel northward—and that’s if the referendum passes. Should their dozen jets prove insufficient, Pacifia will have burned Saint Oda alive by the time the city itself travels to join the battle.
Wes and I exchange nervous glances. Sear reads the anxiety on our faces. “The twelve aircraft will take off in approximately two hours and land before morning. You’re more than welcome to travel with them.”
Wes and I nod vigorously.
“Try to get some sleep en route,” Sear continues. “I find that dreams have a preventative effect on airsickness, whether they’re sweet or bitter.”
And while we’re aloft, Battery Bay will cruise onward, brightly, chaotically. Forgetting we were there until, perhaps, Pacifia gives them a reason to remember.
13
AN OFFICIAL HOVERCRAFT CARRIES US FROM Parliament to the airfield. The roadways, which consist of lanes demarcated by beams of light, soon become an aerial parking lot. Civilian vehicles pass us; many have no ceilings, and people shout furiously, waving their flexible screens like flags. ODANS: BB WANTS YOUR OIL, they’ve written in blood-red type. MAKE WISHES, NOT WARS. And, SEAR LIES, TROOPS DIE.
They’ll never pass the referendum, I think, despair nibbling at my heart.
Below us, through the thicket of antiwar protesters, I see a rectangular park several kilometers wide, walled in by skyscrapers of every shape and size. Although it’s nighttime, light is everywhere—so much that I can’t make out a single star above us. Beams of it pour out of windows, illuminating the park’s fields, forests, small ponds, and one big, amoeba-shaped lake—all that photosynthetic life, I imagine, thriving on the CO2 output from other parts of the city. If only we had time for a pit stop there. These plants were obviously cultivated, as in the Lunar greenhouses, but they’re not prodded, snipped, and forced into single file. How would ours look if they could decide where and how to grow?
At almost every “intersection,” we pass stationary hovercrafts that project pictures of food onto nearby windows. Their proprietors hawk pungent meats, which customers eat off colorful plastic sticks; deep-fried whole sardine sandwiches; and DESSERT PIZZA!!—white chocolate melted on flatbread, topped with raspberries. The oily smells seep into our vehicle and tickle my salivary glands.
Quieter neighborhoods occupy the area north of the park—but that doesn’t mean they’re quiet. Atop centuries-old row houses far below us, people wearing strange geometrical and sparkling clothing dance to stuttering beats. The houses’ walls have been painted over with children’s faces, women in sunny dresses, bearded men in wide-brimmed hats. I notice a few granite churches sandwiched between other buildings, their walls uniquely bare.
As we approach the city’s northern edge, fewer protesters bar our way. Heaps of garbage several stories high are piled near the docks. Freight ships bob near shore, waiting to carry the litter away and deposit it where no Batterer will have to think about it. Just like the Committee, dumping Lunar waste into Earth’s oceans, letting it sink out of sight.
The Batterer airfield, twelve long runways bordered by patchy brown grass, is unimpressive compared with the rest of the city. When we walk onto the tarmac, I squint to see the outlines of the stealth aircraft. I hear the pilot say that, using fish-eye cameras positioned on the body of the planes, the hulls can change color to match their surroundings. They’re mostly hazy gray now, with smatterings of white pinpricks—the reflection of glaring city lights.
“If Battery Bay can invent undetectable aircraft,” I ask the pilot, “why are the streets and airways so . . .” I wrinkle my nose.
“Smelly and hot?” she says. “Most of us want to change that, but no one wants to pay for it. Proposals keep getting voted down.”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” another female pilot says with a snort. “I don’t spend enough time sniffing this place to care.”
As we near the aircraft, I see that they’re shaped like boomerangs, with no real fuselage or tail. Their wingspans are about twenty-five meters, but they’re only two and a half meters tall. The bellies are a brighter silver than the dorsal side, so that they’re countershaded like fish, and their names are textured—not painted—onto the wings: Flounder, Tuatara, Tree Frog. The planes and their animal namesakes can disappear into any background. A dozen aircraft will fly to Saint Oda—one carrying Wes and me, the other eleven bearing an assortment of explosives with which to fortify the islands when we arrive.
Our pilot, dressed in drab brown, helps us climb into the cockpit through the roof of the craft that will take us home. Like the aircraft we passed before, it bears the name of a camouflaging species: Cuttlefish. Inside are seats for three crew members, with no room for passengers. The Batterers push a crate ag
ainst the wall and buckle us down. One of them holds out two green pills, one for me and one for Wes.
“Sleeping meds,” she says. “You’re both new to acceleration to high subsonic speeds while meeting wind resistance from all angles. Trust me, you don’t want to be awake for this.”
We swallow the pills without water, and the crew members fit each of us with noise-canceling headgear. Still, I feel the thrum of the engine reverberate through my chest.
As we head into the air and accelerate upward, some part of me imagines—for a moment—that we’re aiming for the Moon.
* * *
Someone shakes me awake. I lift my eyelids, feeling like I’m drawing back curtains made of lead.
It’s Wes who has disturbed my sleep. He absently rattles my shoulder with his hand while staring out the tiny window behind us.
We’ve landed. I follow Wes’s gaze and see the familiar outline of Koré Island—but something about it looks foreign. Though the sun is high overhead, it shines down on an empty beach and bare cliff face. Sandbags made of flour sacks and scraps of old clothing seal off the entrances to the island’s tunnels, and there’s a gaping pit below the Overhang from which the Odans presumably took the sand. Apart from the occasional scavenging seagull, the very life Saint Oda holds so dear seems to have gone missing.
Wes and I step out of the plane into the freezing air.
Beside us, the Batterer airmen scope out the beach. I stand with Wes, watching them, digging my boots into the tan sand. How odd the visitors look with their guns and gadgets, their flight masks still in place. It’s as if they think the air of Saint Oda could poison them.
“They don’t belong here,” Wes says.
“Do we?” I ask.
Wes glances at the back of his left hand, at the round plastic handscreen that blends seamlessly into his skin. He says nothing.
Several Odans have appeared, hiking down the slope. They’re Sanctuarists; they hold blowguns to their lips as they scrutinize the strange newcomers and their aircraft.
One Sanctuarist—Finley, Wes’s cousin—ventures farther out than the others. When he notices the two of us, a smile breaks out on his face, and he jumps up and down, waving. He looks like a more animated version of his cousin. Still smiling, he turns to run back up the slope toward Wes’s house.
It takes several long minutes for Wes’s parents to arrive on the beach. Wesley Sr. acknowledges our presence with a nod, but instead of approaching, he stops to talk to one of the Batterer pilots. Coward. He must not want to admit he was wrong to distrust me just yet.
Mrs. Carlyle, however, careens down the slope. She runs to us, kicking up flurries of sand, and I scoot sideways to avoid getting flattened. Taking Wes by the shoulders, she kisses his cheeks over and over. When his face turns scarlet, I smile and think of my own mother tucking my silver hair behind my ears. Seeing his happiness makes the ache of missing her bearable.
Wesley Sr. finally approaches, flanked by Batterer airmen. He claps Wes on the shoulder and ignores his son’s instinctive flinch. “Good Sanctuarists obey orders word for word. The worst of them associate with our enemies and flee to distant cities when Saint Oda needs them most. Yet you, my son, are among the best—because you came back, bringing us more than a sliver of hope.”
Wes blinks in surprise, staring at the ground. He looks too abashed for words.
“And Phaet,” adds Wesley Sr., “I treated you with excess caution, relying on the intelligence I had at the time. I do not regret my actions. But know that you are . . . appreciated here.”
It’s a bad apology—and clearly a grudging one—but still I receive it with a curt nod. At least he sounds glad that I didn’t die.
Touching Wes’s shoulder to get his attention, Wesley Sr. changes the subject. “This officer here says that a referendum is currently taking place that will decide whether Battery Bay itself comes to meet Pacifia head-to-head in Saint Oda’s defense.”
“They’ll quit voting five hours from now.” The Batterer pilot has a buzz cut with swirling pinwheel designs shaved onto the sides of his head. He must be in his late thirties, but he hasn’t outgrown the sarcastic smirk of a teenager. “Turnout’s high and getting higher. But the last time I checked, the citizens were voting to stay the hell away from this place. I’d bet my badges they don’t want to leave southern Africa. They like the sun, and traveling costs tax money.”
“So would fighting, yes?” Wesley Sr. says.
The pilot nods. “Not to mention they’d put their lives up for grabs by entering a war zone. Until they’ve decided, all we can do is provide modern weapons to incorporate into your defense plans—so you’re not stuck chucking rocks at Pacifia.”
Wesley Sr.’s fingers curl into a fist at the jibe, but his demeanor remains unruffled. “We have strung large nets between the Odan islands. With any luck, they’ll jam Pacifia’s propellers. Wes, Phaet, and the other Sanctuarists can tie the smaller explosives you brought onto the nets, set them to explode on contact. But first, we need to finish setting up sandbags and Punji sticks.”
“We’ve also brought new toys for your troops: assault rifles, machine guns—”
“No, thank you,” Wesley Sr. says. Although the firearms aren’t exactly the Sanctuarists’ style, I’m surprised he’s rejecting them. “I will not let my men bet their lives on contraptions they’ve never seen before. We will use the methods we’ve relied on for centuries.”
I’m skeptical that booby traps and poison darts will be enough, but I’m not about to offend the Sanctuary Coordinator again by speaking up in the pilot’s defense.
A pained expression flickers across Mrs. Carlyle’s face. “I need to check on Murray and the girls, back at the shelter. They must have heard about the Batterer . . . apparatuses by now.” She turns to go.
“Mother?” Wes calls after her. “Is Murray . . . is she all right?”
“She’s stable,” Mrs. Carlyle says. “But you shouldn’t see her. She hasn’t acted like this in years. Last night, she was railing about you and Lazarus Penny—every wrong you two have done her. Seeing your face could set her off, and she needs to remain calm if she’s to survive the attack.”
Wes inclines his head, touches his eyelids with his fingertips. “But Mother—”
“Good-bye, my boy.” Mrs. Carlyle hurries toward the north entrance, located halfway up the mountain. It’s the only cave opening not sealed shut with sandbags.
“Listen to me, son. Your mother will care for your sister. She’s done it for twenty-two years,” Wesley Sr. says. “And you’ve got work to do. Phaet too—we need help from everyone who’s willing to use potentially lethal objects. In the meantime, if possible, I will persuade the civilians that there’s no need to fear the Batterer contraptions occupying their entire beach.”
Wes and I scramble away with the Sanctuarists to work on last-minute fortifications. Continuing the work they’ve done already, our task is to set up Punji sticks, contaminated wooden spikes concealed by holes in the ground. Their sharp ends will puncture the enemies’ boots, infect their flesh.
Next, we prepare scores of wolfsbane darts for blowguns and select skull-sized rocks for makeshift catapults. The young men give me a wide berth, preferring to talk among themselves about me and, if they must, talk to me through Wes.
I read the assumptions in their eyes—all the racy things Wes and I must’ve done on our voyage, the reasons why I’m allowed to work alongside them despite being female. Soon, Wes and I grow so uncomfortable that without a word, we split off from the group and head toward the remotest part of the islands.
I respect the Sanctuarists’ efforts to prepare, I think as we trudge, but they seem like child’s play. Wes and I are the only ones here who have seen firsthand the full capabilities of the Militia, who know what’s coming when Pacifia arrives.
We don’t mention this to his comrades. They nee
d their courage.
14
AS THE SUN SETS, WES AND I REACH THE southeast harbor. Using the Batterers’ gifts, we’ll rig the nets here to explode.
Our nonstop travel has returned us to the fuzzy, sleep-deprived state so familiar from our Militia days. Working with Wes reminds me of happy memories from late-night training back on the Moon—the thrilling clicks of knife on knife as we swiped at each other, reveling in our skill and our recklessness.
We appropriate a smelly rowboat belonging to some fisherman—he’s no doubt taken refuge in the caves with his family—and paddle toward the north island’s southwest cliff. I gulp, reminded anew of my inability to swim. What if the boat springs a leak and wells up with water, like the submarine?
“Don’t worry.” Wes takes a seat at the stern. It’s easier to steer from there. “You’re not getting wet. In fact, you needn’t leave the boat.”
I shake my head in mock exasperation, but shelve my doubts and step onto the prow. The boat’s rocking throws me off balance, and I hastily plant my rear on the wooden plank that serves as a seat.
“I see Base IV,” Wes says from behind me.
I continue paddling, trying to keep the rowboat on course, but I do steal a look at the Moon. He’s right. I can make out my home city, a cluster of white lumps like fungus, cowering against the wall of a large equatorial crater. I almost feel sorry for it.
“It’s so small, I could squash it between my fingers,” I say. “But everything I ever did happened there.”
Everything until I came here.
“You glad to be going home after this?” Wes asks.
“Glad I can try.” I stand, shifting my weight to counteract the boat’s rocking motion. With the rope attached to the bow, I tether our vessel to the chain of nets in the water.
Behind me, Wes nods. Try. The battle and the journey ahead will test everything we have.
No, everything I have. Wes isn’t coming. Will memories of him be enough to keep the little light in my heart alive? Or will I forget him and the warmth that fills me when he’s around? Separated from him, I might go frigid from the inside out.