Stars Beneath My Feet

by D L Frizzell

  “I’m tired of this. Let’s get back to the computer,” he said. “I’ve got to check something before we head topside.”

  I complied. I turned away from him and walked slowly back to the opening between computer cabinets. Before entering, I glanced over the railing at Redland, He hadn’t moved. There wasn’t any blood, but death doesn’t always require a mess. I angled into the mainframe area and walked slowly toward the chair where the jacket was draped.

  “You can make a move for that pistol if you like,” Jarnum said.

  I sidestepped so he could see that the pistol was still in the jacket pocket where he left it.

  “That’s one of the pistols I took from the cave entrance,” Jarnum explained. “Maybe it works, and maybe it doesn’t. Grab it and see.”

  I didn’t take the bait. Even if the pistol did work, I had a feeling that his plan had already been set in motion and sparking an explosion would only seal Dolina’s fate. It would seal the entire planet’s fate, I reminded myself. Instead, I maneuvered to put the console between him and me. A brief glance down at the console told me the displays and controls were the same on each side. Mirror images, in fact, down to the information displayed on the touchscreens.

  Jarnum pulled the laser pistol from the jacket, aimed it at my face, and then squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He shook his head side to side, clucking his tongue. “Worthless. I can’t even pistol-whip you with it,” he lamented. “The plastic is too light.” He tossed it to the floor.

  I wished I hadn’t given my falcata to Kate. This guy’s routine was getting on my nerves.

  Jarnum kept the four-pronged gun trained on me with his left hand while his right hand danced over the control. “Everything’s in order,” he said, placing his right hand on the touchscreen and locking it down. “Yes, I really have finished my work, marshal. It will just take a short while for the vortex drive to reach full power. I can’t wait to see what happens then!”

  “You’re not going to smash the console?” I asked.

  “And risk causing sparks? You, Marshal Vonn, are a true joy as an adversary. Let’s go.”

  We walked to an elevator, which opened immediately after I pushed the call button. When I saw how big the elevator was, I swore inwardly. Jarnum would be able to keep his distance from me as we rode up to the surface. The only opportunity I would have to get the gun would lie in the pipe-lined corridors. With lots of narrow corners to dodge around, he would have to stay close to keep an eye on me. I decided that would be where I’d make my move.

  We exited the elevator and found ourselves in the same corridor I’d first seen when Redland, Traore, and I entered the dome. It was cramped like I remembered, with a corner just ahead. I walked ahead slowly, preparing myself mentally to subdue Jarnum with extreme prejudice.

  An electrical discharge hit me from behind, sending a painful, stabbing heat through my spine. I warbled an incomprehensible gurgle as my insides convulsed. Spittle shot out of my mouth, followed by droplets of blood. I’d bitten my tongue, but the searing jolt in my back eclipsed the pain. A second later, the sound stopped and my muscles gave way. I fell to the floor in a heap, barely conscious, twitching uncontrollably.

  Doubled over, I could now see Jarnum walking up to me. He holstered the four-pronged pistol and palmed a biometric display on the wall with his right hand. He then came over and knelt beside me.

  “No hydrogen gas here,” he explained, chastising me with a slap to my cheek. He then picked me up and draped me over his shoulder like a rag doll. As he carried me toward the exit, I lost consciousness.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  I woke up with the sound of air rushing around me. I sat on the seat next to Jarnum, strapped in with my arms bound at my sides. I swayed back and forth, up and down while the rotors beat the air furiously. We were in the flyer I had piloted to the reactor. Jarnum was flying the vehicle with a manic smile on his face, working the controls expertly in some kind of maneuver designed to do…what?

  My head still lolling from the effects of electrocution, I looked over my shoulder. Several other flyers were pursuing us, each with flashing blue and red lights. Loudspeakers blared that we should stop or face the consequences. It was Kuznetsov’s voice.

  “Look around!” Jarnum shouted gleefully over the motors. “Witness the end of your world!”

  Still bleary-eyed, it took me a second just to focus on my feet.

  “Hey!” Jarnum punched me hard in the face.

  I opened my eyes and glared at him. He looked carefree, content, free of the insane visage I’d seen earlier.

  “I’ve always enjoyed flying,” he said. “Now I can do it one more time.”

  “I’m happy for you,” I muttered.

  “No, you’re not,” he smiled. “You know, I saw you flying this machine earlier. You were very good.”

  The memory of Jarnum picking me up and tossing me over his shoulder seemed important. He also said he’d simply kicked Redland hard enough to break his ribs and launch him over the catwalk. “Thanks. And you’re stronger than you look.”

  “By design, my friend.”

  He juked the controls suddenly, sending us into a spinning dive that brought me fully to my senses. Ahead of us, the skyscraper’s reflective exterior loomed too close for comfort. As we sped downward toward it, Jarnum pulled back on the controls to change our heading yet again. He misjudged the rate of turn, however, and clipped the corner of the building. We spun madly out of control toward the ground, but he laughed like a boy on a carnival ride as he wrestled the controls.

  I looked to the rear. Kuznetsov and his other pilots didn’t try the same maneuver. Instead, they’d gone past the building, no doubt to circle around it to intercept us on the other side. Jarnum weaved between some of the tower’s massive buttresses before flying through a fountain at the center of the plaza. He tittered happily as water sprayed in our faces, or maybe it was the frightened people running amok that amused him. Either way, he was far too jubilant. I probably didn’t have much time left to get things under control.

  Jarnum increased power to gain back the altitude we’d lost. The flyer vibrated and rattled noisily under the acceleration, so I turned to see why. The protective ring around the left rear rotor had broken off, undoubtedly when we glanced off the tower. Only a small portion of the shield dangled beneath the blades that still spun feverishly upon their exposed linkage.

  “We won’t be able to outrun those other flyers now,” Jarnum declared sorrowfully, “but what a way to go. Look around, Alex. The end is near!”

  The last thing I wanted to do was indulge this crazed lunatic, but was capable of little else at the moment. I looked at the false sun in the artificial sky. It had moved almost a third of the way toward the horizon. I now realized this change was more than just an optical illusion or trick of perspective. Dolina had been built to mimic Earth in every respect. Mankind had been born on a world where the north pole didn’t fixate on the sun, a world where the words ‘day’ and ‘night’ had real distinctions, where seasonal changes created a wide-ranging diversity of climates. White snow in winter. Green grass and trees in the summer. Arion wasn’t like Earth, but it would end in molten fire if I didn’t do something.

  “Do you see it?” he asked insistently. He pointed at the horizon.

  Everything looked the same. Trees, grass, cattle, roads, buildings. People were scrambling, but that was to be expected. The police flyers were no longer in view, which was unexpected. Then I saw the wall around Dolina, where earlier a pearlescent glow was barely visible at ground level. The glow had intensified, now reaching half a kilometer from the ground.

  “What is that?” I asked. I knew already but wanted to keep him talking.

  Jarnum looked around and noticed that the police flyers were no longer after us. He grunted approvingly and set the vehicle to auto-hover. We were now floating two kilometers above the city. Our ride would have been calm were it not for the rattling rotor blades.

&
nbsp; “That glow is a result of accretion,” Jarnum explained. “That ridiculous false projection of the sky will fade out as the vortex reactor’s power increases. It’s a slow process, but your friends lack the means to stop the progression.”

  I stared at the expanding glow above the city wall. It grew almost imperceptibly, which meant I had some time, but I wasn’t sure what else I could do.

  “Dolina should start to feel tremors soon,” Jarnum remarked. “It won’t be pleasant, but you and I will be free from the quakes up here.”

  “Wonderful.”

  Jarnum looked at my vest. “That star you’re wearing looks familiar,” he noted with a hint of surprise. He unpinned the badge from my vest and turned it over to look at the back. “Do you know this used to be mine? I made these scratches.”

  He held it up for me to see the uneven markings. I’d always wondered what they meant, but I wasn’t going to ask now. “You should’ve been an artist,” I said.

  “I was, sort of,” Jarnum said. “That was before…” He paused, thought grimly about something, and then changed the subject. “Redland talked me into taking the job as his deputy. He manipulated my tragedy for his own ends, and then used me until I had nothing else to offer.”

  “That sounds familiar,” I deadpanned.

  “That man is a force of nature,” Jarnum sighed, giving me a wan smile that suggested we had so much in common. He pinned the star back onto my vest, being careful to orient it correctly. “There,” he said, satisfied. “You should be the one to wear it. You earned it.”

  I realized that maybe we did have a lot in common. I didn’t know his life story. Surely it was a long tale of grief and sorrow just like everybody else’s. “I bet you used to be a nice person,” I said.

  His eyes went wide. He stared at me suspiciously at first, but then smiled. “You know? I was. I really was. That changed, of course.”

  “Why? You said Redland used your tragedy,” I said, looking past him for a second to see the sky was taking on a pinkish hue. The sun’s intensity had started to fade, but the sky had not dimmed. If anything, it grew brighter.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Jarnum said. “It’s all gone, destroyed many years ago. Those T’Neth,” he said, his anger building again, “they were the ones that took everything from me.” He placed his hands on the flyer’s controls and squeezed as though reliving the pain of those long-ago moments.

  Jarnum sat there, eyes squeezed shut, his mumbles drowned out by the sound of three operational – and one damaged – lifting rotors. That sound, as it turned out, was also loud enough to mask the scrape of glass against fabric. I’d found one of our broken, jagged touchscreens with my fingers, and desperately cut at my seat’s restraint and the rope that bound me. When I cut through the last strand, I was already in motion.

  Jarnum didn’t see my fist coming the first time. He reeled for a moment with the impact on his right temple, a move I was sure would knock him out. It didn’t. His eyes, those damned black eyes, looked like the devil’s own as he caught my second swing before it landed.

  He was wearing a seat restraint, which prevented him from rising out of his seat to assault me head on. This gave me a moment to jump out of the front seat to reposition myself behind him in the back seat. As he grabbed for his seat's buckle, I wrapped my arm around his neck and squeezed. He might as well have been wearing a steel collar for all the good it did. I knew instantly I wouldn’t be able to choke the life out of him. I also knew he would have my thumb in his grip an instant later. Before he grabbed it, I released my hold and boxed his ears. That made him mad.

  His belt now off, he swung around with his right arm – the one encased in that titanium shackle - and hit a glancing blow against my shoulder. If my reflexes hadn’t been what they were, it would have been my head there and that would’ve been the end of the fight. The guy hit like a yondergun.

  As I deflected another swing from him, I moved to the other side in the back where he couldn’t fully reach me. That meant his only option was to get out of his seat to come after me, and that was just fine. As he spun and put his foot on the center console, I saw he had sacrificed balance for speed. I brought my left boot up at full speed and connected on his chin. I hoped he felt the full equal and opposite force of my kick. He did, only it didn’t affect him as much as I would’ve liked.

  Jarnum reeled, but only for a moment. He exhaled forcefully, spitting blood in the process. Instead of coming after me, he leaned back. The four-pronged gun was still on his hip. He reached for it, that deranged smile spreading back over his face.

  I didn’t have my pistol. Neither did I have my falcata. What I did have was my wits. I lunged, but not at Jarnum like he expected. I went for the dashboard and threw the thumb switch on the power controls.

  The left side of the vehicle dropped so fast that the centrifugal force spun Jarnum over the side of the flyer. He managed to wedge his feet between the seat and the side panel before falling out. I would have fallen out myself, except that I knew what was coming and had time to grab the lap belt beside me. I kicked wildly as the vehicle pitched over and managed to connect with Jarnum’s cheekbone as he flailed about. It flung him backward over the edge, and also knocked one of his legs free from the seat. The other leg, the one with the holster, was still wedged against the side panel.

  I came at him again. He swung at me with the shackle, hitting me in the ribs. Being off-balance as he was, the impact was considerably lessened. In fact, it pushed him backwards into a more precarious position. It gave me the opening I needed to grab the gun, so I did.

  I didn’t know what kind of gun it was. I only knew what it did to me earlier. As it cleared the holster, I pushed it into the flesh of Jarnum’s hip and fired. Sparks showered from his stolen uniform, and the gun sank into his thigh. He didn’t scream. The guttural noise that sputtered from his throat was much more satisfying

  The vehicle was now sideways, losing altitude and still pitching. There was no way to reverse the flyer’s spin, since I was dangling by the seat’s strap with one hand and holding the electrical gun in the other. I wedged myself between the back seats as the vehicle flipped and held on through the full rotation. When it was nearly upright again, I reached over the seat and flipped the auto-hover switch again to let the vehicle stabilize itself.

  I stumbled a bit as the flyer lurched precariously but kept my balance and stood upright as it leveled off. Amazingly, Jarnum was still hanging from the side of the vehicle by his scorched leg and left hand while trying to grab me with his right. “Not so fast,” I said, and rammed the gun’s needles deep into his trapped knee. I held the trigger down and twisted the weapon into the cartilage. The sizzling, burning, cooking smell was absolutely gratifying, right up to the moment Jarnum grabbed the gun by its upper receiver.

  The gun snapped in his grip.

  Jarnum took another swing at me with his shackle and would’ve brained me were it not for the fact that his knee separated at the joint like a cooked turkey wing. He fell backwards off the vehicle. His right arm, still swinging at me, came into easy reach so I grabbed his hand.

  “I’m not done with you!” I yelled. He was a heavy sonofabitch, a lot heavier than he looked. I flattened myself on the seat to keep him from pulling me over the side. After scrambling with both hands, I managed to get a firm grip on his wrist. He squeezed back with enough force to make me wince.

  Jarnum cursed and struggled but had no leverage. His other leg wobbled, probably still paralyzed from the shot to his hip. He could’ve reached for me with his other hand at that moment, but for some reason he didn’t.

  “You think it matters what you do to me?” He screamed. “We’re both dead men, marshal. Look at the vortex field!”

  As much as I didn’t want to, I did look. The sun had disappeared. The pearlescent vortex glow had risen halfway up to the zenith, and what sky was left had begun to flicker. Below, the evidence of quakes was clear. We were only a few hundred meters off the ground now, cl
ose enough that I could see cracks forming in the streets and buildings beginning to crumble from the vibration. The quakes would be worse outside Dolina where the vortex effect gripped against the very fabric of space. The southern hemisphere would crumble as its momentum plowed it over the immovable vortex field, and the northern hemisphere would soon follow. The T’Neth corridor, which might survive the shearing forces, would inevitably flood with liquid magma. Where the Great Cataclysm had nearly destroyed Arion ten millennia ago, Jarnum would finish the job. Millions of humans would die, and so would the T’Neth. Dolina, encased in its protective field, might survive, but not for long. No shield could withstand the heat of an entire planet’s core. The city would cook, and the reactor would finally explode.

  “We’re all dead!” Jarnum laughed maniacally.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Across the planet, millions of sentient beings were about to die as Jarnum’s mad scheme came to fruition. I saw why Kuznetsov’s men had abandoned us. Their flyers were parked at the reactor dome. They had gone down to the vortex drive to undo what had been done, to try and shut off the power that protected them for the past five hundred years, but now threatened the entire planet. They wouldn’t succeed. Jarnum was an expert, and only he had the key.

  I suppose I could have considered my next action a little more carefully, but instincts outpaced my brain. Admittedly, that’s a character flaw that hasn’t always served me well. I hauled Oliver Jarnum up the side of the flyer with the last of my strength.

  “You’re a fool if you think I’m going to help you stop what’s coming!” he spat through bloody lips.

  “I don’t need your help,” I shouted over the sound of the rotors. “I just need your arm.”

  Realization dawned on his face when he saw what I was doing. Before he could fight back. I dragged him across the side of the flyer. The exposed blades on the damaged rotor cut through his muscles like they were wet paper, flinging blood in every direction. The bone offered slightly more resistance, but still came apart in a flurry of shards. Jarnum flailed his remaining two limbs in a desperate attempt to resist me, but it was too late. A look of pained realization washed over his face as his arm separated at the elbow. As he fell, I held out his bloodied, shackled arm for him to see one last time. He spun in the air for a few seconds, and then hit the marble head-first by the fountain in the plaza.