Dove Alight

by Karen Bao

  Frantic, I spin the steering ball to the right. The hovercraft flips over, and Wes screams hoarsely, wordlessly.

  I clench my eyes shut, fight the rising bile in my throat, and slam my palm over the ball to stop the spinning.

  The sky is above me again. I open my eyes and look over the edge of the craft.

  Lazarus keeps falling—down, down, toward the sea, until a black parachute snaps open above his head. I watch the dark dot drift until fog rolls in to conceal it.

  He’ll be back, I think, dread hitting me in a sickly wave. He won’t stop until we’re dead and the Committee has won. Until he has their “love.”

  Murray dangles from the side of the craft, where he left her. Chained to the railing, her bloody hand is raised as if in triumph. Her legs seem to kick, like she’s swimming through the wind. A nimbus of dust-colored hair, darkened now by rain, surrounds her scarred, peaceful face. A maroon stain blossoms like a flower across her chest.

  I imagine pouring all that blood back into her body. It’s as feasible as piecing together the hostel’s shattered windows or reaching through the clouds to pluck Lazarus’s black parachute out of the ocean.

  Nothing that’s happened here can be undone.

  WES PERCHES ON THE HOVERCRAFT’S RAILING, holding on with one hand. His other limbs are tucked into a ball, and he looks over the edge at his sister’s body, tossed about by gusts as if she were made of paper.

  I pull the hovercraft into a U-turn, set it on autopilot, and cross the deck to Wes. Shock mutes the feel of icy rain hitting my face and the throbbing of the gash on my back.

  Murray Carlyle. A guiltless girl—gone, because of chance, or one man’s evil, or our own inadequacy. Or all three.

  My fingers curl around Wes’s wrist, the one that’s clamped down on the railing. “Come down? Wes?”

  He doesn’t move. His eyelids are swollen and red; his breath comes in bursts. One hand reaches down and grabs the chain tethered to his sister’s handcuffs; he heaves upward. The muscles and tendons in his neck strain against the skin. I clamber onto a seat, grab the chain, and tug with what strength I have left.

  It takes too much time to pull Murray back on deck, and yet too little. I can’t bear to look at her bloodied clothes and her open eyes. They’re a dull, flat gray now. The sparks have disappeared.

  Wes cradles her head to his chest, slides her eyelids shut, buries his face in her hair. Only when he’s hidden himself do his shoulders start to shake. I’d hold him if it didn’t mean intruding. After I lost Mom, my first impulse was to run from everything that breathed. My love for her belonged to her alone; why should I share that grief with anyone else?

  Boom. A massive explosion, somewhere on Battery Bay. I look backward and gasp as Parliament’s meeting hall implodes, the sea urchin folding in on itself amidst a red-and-orange cloud. The city of Pacifia has edged close to its archenemy; fighter planes and water speeders jet toward Battery Bay, ready to do even more damage.

  A painful cry escapes Wes’s mouth, drawing my attention to our hovercraft. I can’t hold back anymore. My leaden hand finds his shoulder in stops and stutters; the other rubs circles into his back. He holds Murray closer and shakes harder, wraps his arms tighter around her. And I watch, helpless.

  “Come on!” The familiar, amplified voice is from a Pygmette below. Its top hatch is flipped wide open. In the turmoil, I must not have heard it approach. Yinha’s waving one arm and steering with the other. “Jump! You’re losing altitude—jump before you crash!”

  “We have to go, Wes,” I whisper.

  Yinha’s Pygmette is almost level with ours. Below, the battle at sea rages.

  “Destroy this craft, then.” Wes lifts his face to the sky. “She’d want her ashes scattered across the water.”

  I cross back to the controls, turn the hovercraft to face Pacifia, push the thrusters as far as they’ll go, and lock in the settings. It will accelerate from here.

  Yinha loses a meter of altitude relative to our position. I can’t see her face, but her hands slip and shake on the controls. Blood vessels and tendons crisscross the backs of her clenched fists.

  We stand, climb over the railing, ready our feet, bend our knees. Then, hands locked together, we jump.

  * * *

  The Pygmette sags beneath the weight of three people. Wes and I catch our breath, watch our former hovercraft roar toward Pacifia. Enemy lasers, missiles, and bullets strike the hull, but none can stop the craft’s kamikaze advance. A side panel breaks off and spirals downward. As the engine overheats, the vehicle catches fire.

  A missile blows off the left wing, and I hold my breath. The hovercraft loses more altitude and beelines for lower Pacifia, where horizontal black smokestacks belch coal residue.

  It makes contact.

  Right over the engine rooms.

  FLAMES SPURT FROM PACIFIA’S HULL, THEIR reflections shimmering orange and white in the waves. Murray’s pyre. Blinking raindrops from my eyes, I picture the remainder of her body catching fire, sinking into the ocean like countless others around her. She shared her life with so few, but her death with so many. I hope she’d have wanted that.

  The collision leaves a gaping hole in Pacifia’s steel-paneled hull. As Yinha flies us toward Battery Bay, dodging broken aircraft fragments, a surge of Batterer ships flies past us in the opposite direction. The blaze by the Pacifian engine room draws their heat-seeking missiles. More explosions sound from the floating city’s interior.

  Fumbling, I apply an adhesive bandage to my back and bind up Wes’s leg wound, which he doesn’t seem to feel. In the distance, a siren cuts off the thousand screams: a citywide alarm sounding on Pacifia. It slides upward in pitch and volume, dipping back down every few seconds as if catching its breath, reminding us that twenty million Pacifians are trapped in the city as its engine rooms go up in smoke.

  The civilians never meant to hurt us, yet they are the ones who suffer.

  Soon, we’re flying over gray skyscrapers rather than gray water. Battery Bay is barely recognizable: the hostel, many of its windows missing, its steel frame exposed and crooked; the huge rectangular park, chasms dug out of the green and forested spaces by Pacifian bombs; airways emptied of hovercraft, save the occasional ambulance soaring along at many meters per second above the posted speed limits. A choir of Batterer sirens pulsates under the screaming Pacifian one.

  Yinha looks over her shoulder at me. “Murray?” she whispers, quietly so that Wes doesn’t hear. He sits behind me, staring ahead, arms wrapped loosely around my middle.

  I shake my head no.

  The ship lurches, and a cry whips through the hazy air. Witnessing Yinha’s grief shatters my heart all over again, but I reach under her arm and hold the joystick steady.

  Yinha pilots us several kilometers, to the part of Battery Bay that faces away from Pacifia. Here, the damage is less extensive. We head for the tallest building in the city, an elongated loop of glass tinted teal and gold, the colors shifting and glinting even under the cloudy sky. Nicknamed the Needle’s Eye, the structure has an elongated looped spire that rises from the top, its tip piercing the clouds. Across hundreds of floors, there are only a few broken windows.

  Yinha takes the craft up in a slow, graceful curve. We approach the observation deck, some four hundred meters above sea level. Hundreds of people have gathered, but they clear out a space for us to land. Yinha occupies it after two wobbly attempts. She powers off the craft, puts her head down on the dashboard, and lies there, shaking.

  I wish I could cry too. I wish I could feel something—anything.

  With every blast of wind, the Needle’s Eye leans, the structure slanted like the raindrops as they fall. It creaks as it bends, but it doesn’t break. Wes hunches over in his seat behind me, making himself as small as possible. Like me, after Mom died, wanting to disappear. At least I could run to the greenhouses to be alo
ne. All Wes has for shelter is me.

  Finally, Yinha climbs out of the Pygmette. She offers a hand to help me up. Mist coats the inside of her visor.

  I reach back to squeeze Wes’s hand. His limp fingers tighten around mine. Then I switch the Pygmette to its space settings to give him some privacy, and disembark, following Yinha. The craft’s opaque carbon-fiber shell closes around Wes like a cocoon.

  Batterers are fighting for space at the observation deck’s edges. Andromeda pushes through them to reach us, the binoculars around her neck bouncing with each step. I blink, shocked, as Dovetail’s second-in-command takes me in her warm, soft arms.

  “We’ve been searching the sky for you. We almost sent out scouting ships, but this poor visibility would’ve made it a waste.”

  She’s right. I can barely see Pacifia’s looming outline through the haze; from this distance, the aircraft of both sides, hovering around Battery Bay’s other end, look identical. Shiny specks, fading in and out of their stormy surroundings.

  “Where are the boys?” Andromeda asks.

  “Alex is still out there,” Yinha says. “Wes is in the ship. His sister . . .” She blinks—hard—and turns away.

  “Finally free,” I say, using the Odan euphemism for death. Murray’s free now, indeed. Free from shame, from her damaged body, from her ever-present memories. Even Andromeda, Lunar born and raised, understands my meaning; she bows her head in that embarrassed way people do when mourning a stranger’s pain.

  “Free from what?” Yinha snaps at me. “Are you saying she’s better off?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she looks toward the horizon, face unreadable. I follow her gaze and find myself staring at the blurry contours of Pacifia, at the blaze that’s taken over the lower hull. It looks comically small from this distance, as harmless as an ember-tipped match.

  The clouds begin to part, and the mists thin. Pacifia’s siren wail stops, and a low hum rumbles out of the engines that haven’t yet burned. The Pacifians’ clunky bombers pull U-turns in midair and head homeward. On the water, countless speeders do the same, leaving white arrows of foam on the dark sea’s surface. Pacifia has begun its retreat.

  “The rain may put out the fire,” Andromeda says, “but wind will spread the embers.”

  I grasp her deeper meaning. What’s begun here today will set off a chain of consequences across Earth and the Moon. Battery Bay must take up arms against the Committee, or let the Pacifian and Militia joint attack go unpunished. After so much human suffering, Dovetail will get what it wants.

  The realization meets only numbness in my mind. I watch Pacifia limp away until the horizon is as empty as I feel.

  * * *

  The Parliament building’s ruins lie smoldering behind the military procession. Battalions of Batterer soldiers march down the wide avenue, boots crunching on rubble. Shiny, rain-slicked black tanks are interspersed throughout their ranks; officers carry flags from all over the Batterer alliance, flown at half-staff to mourn the lives lost in the recent battle.

  Prime Minister Sear stands on a balcony overlooking the scene. He speaks reassuring words that don’t matter to me. So many other noises are swallowing his voice that it’s not worth the mental effort to pick apart his meaning.

  Squarish old spaceships fly above the army’s ranks, plunging the troops into shadow. Batterer craft run on the large side, ranging from Omnibus-sized to the length of a small skyscraper oriented horizontally. The vehicles have been refurbished in a rush following Parliament’s unanimous declaration of war against the Lunar-Pacifian alliance. Rust coats the seams in the metal; many vehicles sport dents from the last time they were used: thirty years ago, in the failed diplomacy mission to the bases.

  “They’re gonna attack the Commmittee with those?” On my right, Yinha works her jaw. “They’re relics. Heavy steel exteriors, no self-repairing mechanism. Pilots are probably out of practice too.”

  Relics? Alex would say. Don’t you mean coffins? He’s with Wes and the other Odans in what’s left of the rectangular park, participating in a mourning ritual for Murray and the other dead.

  “At least it’s something,” I mumble. “We got the alliance we came for.”

  Under Committee rule, we didn’t hold funerals. Hours after someone died, officials picked up the body, burned it, and mixed the ashes into the greenhouse soil. The deceased continued to serve the bases, and the rest of us moved on. Excessive emotion earned official admonition, as it “hindered progress” and “disrupted order.” I didn’t know then that the Committee had ordered many deaths and wanted us to forget them too. After Dad’s, Mom ordered my siblings and me never to cry—not even inside our apartment.

  That’s why the Odans baffle me. All of them, even the disciplined Sanctuarists, have removed themselves from the larger world for hours to honor their dead. They need to live, I imagine Mom saying. Not only survive.

  A wave of gasps runs through the crowd, pulling me away from my troubled thoughts. The Batterers tilt their heads back, pointing upward.

  A small open hovercar, painted orange and packed with yelling civilians, flies under the spacecraft, above the foot soldiers. It trails a black cloth banner with a blinking white skull and text that reads: CUT TIES TO PHONY ALLIES. Another hovercraft follows, bearing the message, THEY’RE NOT DOVES, THEY’RE WAR HAWKS. A third: DOVETAIL SACRIFICED OUR LIVES FOR THEIR CAUSE.

  A burning sensation breaks through my numbness. Anger. Do the Batterers really think we staged the Pacifian attack to enlist their nation’s help? I push back against the surge of feeling. Such unfounded hypotheses are bound to surface in a place with a vocal, multifaceted population. Still, this one hurts. They’re accusing Dovetail of the same double-dealing that we’re trying to fight.

  Three meters to my right, a preteen boy with a long blond ponytail tugs on his father’s sleeve. I barely make out his words—they’re muffled by Sear’s booming voice.

  “Can’t they get in trouble for interrupting a military procession?”

  His father’s wearing a ponytail too and has a curling beard several centimeters long. “Parliament’s shut down, police are digging people out of the ground—the conspiracy theorists can do what they damn well please.”

  Yellow emergency lights begin flashing, followed by beeping from the PA system. Panic and exasperation well up inside me; I hold back a groan. Another attack? On every side, people crane their heads toward the sky, but the soldiers on the street march onward, trying to look unfazed.

  Then a crackling public announcement rocks the city. “Unidentified falling object is approaching the Needle’s Eye at terminal velocity.”

  No! Amidst the screaming, milling crowd, I scan the sky, but too many clouds obscure my line of sight. Though the Needle’s Eye is far away, I feel a slow ache build in my heart. It’s one of the few architectural beauties on Battery Bay that’s remained intact, and it’s full of people that won’t get out in time.

  “Object is a sphere less than a foot in diameter. We have reason to believe it originates from the Moon. Evacuate the area immediately.”

  A FLASH OF STEEL PLUMMETS FROM THE clouds. Filmed by remote-controlled vlogger cameras broadcasting to civilians’ roll-out screens all over the city, it lands on the observatory of the Needle’s Eye, stirring up a mushroom cloud of dust. Shrieks and screams drown out the sound of impact. But there’s no thunderous explosion, no splintered metal or raging fire or bodies tossed about.

  After the dust settles and the crowd clears, I see that the object has split down the middle, like a walnut cracking open in the neatest possible way. A conical light beam shoots upward from the opening, and a giant, high-resolution projection of the Moon forms high above the city. We tip our heads back to watch.

  As it rotates, each base becomes visible—I and II near the North Pole; III, IV, and V scattered across the Near Side; and Base VI, the one lonely settlement in
the center of the Far Side. We can even see the satellites orbiting the Moon, like wasps circling their hive.

  Below the projection is a timer—this seems to be footage from 16:32 Lunar time: yesterday afternoon. The Batterers’ screams yield to stunned silence. Too afraid to watch the fake Moon, I look at their faces instead.

  That’s when an almighty boom shatters the peace. Heart pulsating in my chest, I search the area for the source. But Yinha taps me on the shoulder, gestures to the fake Moon with a quivering finger.

  A spherical aurora is expanding above a familiar crater on the Moon’s Far Side. It looks like a dandelion, bursting with silver tufts. The light stings my eyes, but I can’t look away from the beauty of it, and the horror.

  The dandelion cloud rises and dissipates, leaving behind a crater full of fire, blackened metal, shattered glass. The enormous radio telescope and particle accelerator, blown to bits.

  This has to be an animation, I tell myself, hoping beyond hope. Not real footage.

  But then the shot zooms in—to the blood-soaked bodies buried underneath the debris, limbs swelling as the water in them vaporizes in the absence of pressure. Crushed bones, melted skin, blank minds. No one, not even the Committee, could fake such gore.

  Black text wraps around the silver Moon. AID THE DOVETAIL INSURGENCY, AND WE WILL DESTROY YOU.

  Fragmented thoughts collide in my mind, unable to form a coherent whole. Bomb. Who would call us an insurgency?—the Committee. The Far Side . . . the Singularity.

  Back when Dovetail took the Singularity, the Committee made a terrifying threat. And now they’ve followed through.

  Something’s wrapped around my cold forearms: Yinha’s trembling hands. Even as I watch her desolate face and hear her shouted words, I find myself unable to feel, as I did watching Murray’s last moments. As if by holding back emotion, I can deny what I’ve seen here.