by Ashanti Luke
—Well, you and mommy only speak Commonspeak to each other.
—True, but I understand the most basic things she says. I learned in college as a courtesy to her and your grandparents. I’m just not comfortable speaking it.
—Do you ever feel jealous when Uncle Xander speaks Farsi to mommy?
—Not really. I trust your uncle. He’s a little too, what’s the word, bombastic to hide what he’s saying about someone.
—You think when you leave, he and mommy might get together?
—Why would you think something like that Dari?
—Well, mom’s really pretty, and sometimes she and Uncle Xander seem to get along better than you and her. Just sayin’. It’s not that I want it, but why wouldn’t any man want to be with mommy? And if you’re not here, who’s to stop them?
—Well, your mother will either play Penelope or she won’t. But if she doesn’t, I expect you to play Telemachus.
—I don’t know what that means Dada. Who are Penelope and Telemachus?
—Penelope and Telemachus are characters in Homer’s Odyssey. There’s a holofilm version you and I should watch some day. But what it means is, if your mother wants someone else, Uncle Xander or otherwise, no amount of Farsi could stop it.
—Why would she want someone other than you, Dada?
—One of these days, Dari, you’ll understand that your Dada is human, and he makes mistakes too.
—So if you make mistakes too, why are you so hard on me?
—Because I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did.
—Oh, I can see that, but it’s still hard to see the mistakes you make.
—Sometimes it’s hard for me too until it’s too late. But I can give you some advice Dari. Try not to take anything good you have for granted, because there may come a day when taking it for granted makes it not good any more.
—I’m not really sure what that means.
—Well Dari, I sincerely hope you never have to learn.
• • • • •
Cyrus walked over to Jang, who was basking in the sun and holding hands with Doree. Jang brushed his hair to the side and she giggled as Cyrus approached. Jang seem to notice the intent in Cyrus’s face, and he himself began to look more serious before Cyrus even opened his mouth, “How soon could you, Doree, and Fenrir get the gravity drives off all but two levs in Paeryl’s fleet?”
Jang seemed stymied by the question and only muttered, but Doree answered for him, “Perhaps twenty hors if we work nonstop, and if we have help.” she smiled and looked to Jang.
Jang simply nodded.
“And how long would it take to bury them out there,” Cyrus pointed to the path that led into the compound, “and then connect power lines to them and cover them in concrete?”
Evidently they were both stymied by that question as they could only manage to look at each other and murmur, which, as far as Cyrus was concerned, was an excellent sign. Jang was one of the sharpest human beings Cyrus ever knew, and Doree seemed to be his match. If the two of them had no idea what he was talking about from those two questions, then the likelihood that the Echelon would figure it out before it was too late was virtually nil—and those were odds Cyrus was willing to gamble on.
• • • • •
As Torus Denali stood at the helm of the command barge, he relished the warm anticipation that spread through his body. The thirty fighters that cruised before him across the Ashan plain, skimming the ground to avoid early visual detection, filled his mind with comfort knowing that justice, today, would be served. Justice for this pride at the containment facility. Justice for the men who died at the pyramid hangar. And justice for the men still stranded in deep orbit on the detached J.L. Orbital. For this DC would be the final DC of reckoning for those loathsome Apostates. And the prospect of watching their too long eluded demise first-hand almost broke his composure.
And it had been so simple. They had just been looking for the wrong things. In all their searches they had looked for constructs and shelters, some sign of civilized life in the barren wastes. But in a land where the meaning of predation had been all but lost, where the rains only occurred underground, there was no need for shelter, especially not for photosynthesizing savages who lived only to gorgejack and pillage.
And now, the Apostates’ greatest heist would prove their downfall and Denali’s glory. As his battalion cruised no more than fifteen meters from the ground, less than four kilometers away from the constant signal the Ark transmitted, Denali prepared to give the command for the fleet to rise to detection altitude in order to triumphantly blot out the Apostates’ beloved sun as they approached. But there was something odd in the distance.
Denali squinted and leaned forward to get a better glimpse, but only saw the fighter on point flip in an almost comical motion and then careen into two fighters behind it. The three fighters caromed into a large fighter as the laws of reality seemed to distort. And then Denali saw the dust and rocks, along with debris from the spinning wreck before him, falling upward just before another fighter exploded, catching those around it in a chain reaction as the outermost fighters spread to either side to evade the chaos. And then he saw the rocks around his ship suddenly rise from the ground, and before he was tossed from his perch on the helm, he knew that, once and for all, he had been beaten. And as the world contorted around him, and the air inside the bridge began to scald, he realized, it was not as bad as he imagined.
thirty
• • • • •
—Dada, do you think you could beat Uncle Xander in chess?
—Maybe. We’ve never played.
—Kinda strange that you guys are old friends and you never played.
—Don’t think he wants to risk it.
—Why not?
—Because he doesn’t like to lose.
—Last time I checked, you don’t like to lose either Dada.
—Well, your Uncle is different. He has held a grudge against everyone who has ever beaten him.
—So you’ve never beaten him?
—Like I said, he avoids competition with me.
—He always beats me at chess.
—Well, I always beat you at chess too.
—Yeah, but he’s more like a machine. You’re different every time.
—That’s because I adjust to you. I take what I know about you and I use it against you.
—Like what?
—Like the fact that you always try to think too far ahead, and because of that, sometimes, you miss things right in front of you.
—Yeah, I guess so, huh.
—Your uncle is a lot like that too. If he did lose, it would be because I frustrated him into a loss.
—Yeah, you are kinda frustrating to play.
—Well, I’m glad to be of service.
—Ha. Well, one of these days, it would be interesting to see you go up against Uncle Xander, but you might have to let him win.
—You should know by now Dari, I never let anyone, and that means anyone, win. Anyone who ever beat me earned it.
—Well, maybe he would earn it.
—Maybe, Dari, but friendship is hard to come by, and pride comes and goes. I personally would never want to be in a situation where I let my pride ruin a friendship, and I would be hard-pressed to forgive a friend who did.
• • • • •
They had sat on the edge of the Miasma with Set barely visible on the horizon for four hours, absorbing the last rays of the orange sun they would ever feel before they began the march to their destination. The Ace of Wands and Taeryn had led the caravan that had left them there and had flown back to have their levs dismantled. Now Six was on his own far outside the earwig network. This plan had no contingency; it would either succeed or fail epically, and Taewook of Cups did not want to risk any chance of his own signal being phreaked. So Six led the bulk of the Apostate clan into the Miasma at a jog, dual-tipped spear in hand, toward the gilded tip of the pyramid that peaked just above t
he darkened horizon. He was not comfortable bringing the children and elders with him, but there was no other way. So he marched, at the point of his own phalanx, and he hoped with every optimistic nerve in his body that this plan would go smoother than the last.
Several hours later, the Ace of Wands flew next to Taeryn, attacking the pyramid again. They had waited until one of the Echelon levs had left, and Jang had phreaked the opening codes again. They were sure there would be some sort of countermeasures to keep the same attack from happening twice, but this time it wouldn’t matter. This time they were equipped with only three weapons each—one pulse missile, one mining laser taken from the craft they had stolen earlier, and one directional bomb that Fenrir, Aerik, and Davidson had made from the processed waste products brought back in the soil processing lev they were now using to carry the Eos. It made it very hard to dodge the laser batteries now spread around the pyramid, but thanks to Taewook spoofing the imaging system, the Echelon could not use their computer to lock on to targets, and they had to fire the lasers manually. The controls of the crafts they now powered were familiar, but the ships themselves were sluggish and did not respond to commands as smoothly as the grav-levs of Asha did. They had needed all the grav-drives to set the trap for the Echelon attack force, which according to the last earwig transmission, had worked beautifully. And as Taewook of Cups advised the Ace of Wands and Taeryn to get ready, the bay door to the pyramid opened just as they swooped down side-by-side, dropping their bombs when their HUDs gave them the mark. The Ace hoped that the rest of this plan would work as beautifully because all the lives that meant anything to him were at stake.
When Azariah, Paulice, and Cyrus had devised the plan, Cyrus said they would use a tactic the Echelon could not anticipate because they had no reason to have ever seen it. Six could not fathom what a small band of outcasts, resourceful as they may have been, could come up with that was outside of the Echelon’s understanding. Cyrus’s van had assaulted the pyramid immediately after the fighter attack. Six had to wait for their mark to give his own command to action. The ten minutes Six had to wait after the bombing of the door seemed like an Eos-age. The time and anticipation filled Six with doubt as he could hear the calamity inside the hangar. But when Six blew his horn to signal the entire band of Apostates, some two hundred men, women, and children, to pour in through the smoke from the ruined blast door, he himself understood the power of a Fringe-rush.
• • • • •
Cyrus’s van had entered the pyramid ahead of the Apostates and stormed the hangar to clear a path for Six and the others. They had cleared a thin swath through the guards in the hangar and had proceeded on to prep the ship they were going to apportion. Six marveled at the sheer size of the hangar, but was almost floored as they reached the door that had been blasted open on the opposite side, revealing an even larger holding area. Six could hear the whine of the lasers as the two fighters piloted by Taeryn and the Ace of Wands drew fire and cut down the foremost guards beyond the second bay door. By the time the Echelon soldiers inside had gathered themselves, the Apostate men, women, and children they had terrorized for more than half a century descended upon them in a swarm—it was a satisfying sight, but it was not pretty.
By the time the Apostates had reached the furthest ship marked with Greek letters that spelled ‘Grigori,’ Cyrus and all the members of his van except Taewook had already powered up the ship. The guards inside the hangar seemed to have been lower vertices, and by the time their commanders had realized they had been counter-attacked, and that their Torus had fallen to a trap, the Apostates had already filed into the gargantuan cargo hold of the apportioned ship, and it was passing through the smoldering bay doorway that had opened directly in front of it.
Six waited behind the others inside the massive ship as it pulled away from the pyramid. And as they skirted the ground, moving out of the hangar as Taeryn and the Ace of Wands met their ship outside the range of the Echelon lasers, Six wondered if he really would miss this miserable ball of errant rock and was surprised by his answer.
The Ashan desert became lighter as they sped further from the Miasma. Three Earth mag-levs, which had been retrieved from the Paracelsus, cruised behind them, closing in slowly on the open cargo door so as not to alarm the Apostates being ushered into the barracks quarters. The soil processor carrying the Eos settled first, followed by the dozer carrying the supplies and suncasters that would keep them alive during the trip to Earth. Finally, Jang pulled in behind the other two levs in the dragon lorry they had stolen in their escape. Just as he settled the lev between the others, Uzziah asked where the Ace of Wands and Taeryn were over the earwig, but before Jang could answer, two Echelon fighters jumped in behind them and positioned themselves to fire.
Fenrir and Chandra instantly emerged from the crowd and fired their assault weapons, but the bullets only flashed against the astrapi shields on the Ashan fighters. The laser nodes on the front of them began to glow, and the Apostates still in the cargo area fell to the ground and covered their heads. There was the whine of a laser strike, and Jang had expected showers of sparks in the cargo bay, but the sparks only danced across the top of the closest fighter. There were two more bursts, a bright flash, and then the two fighters piloted by the Ace of Wands and Taeryn descended to take the place of the fallen Echelon fighters. As Taeryn and the Ace of Wands pulled into the cargo hold, Jang began to exit his own lev, but as he opened the door, there was a strange static in the air that raised the hairs on his arms, neck, and face. Instinctively, he checked the rear view on the holomonitor and his worst fears were realized. A vaguely lev-shaped blur grew in the monitor as sparks flew from the base of the cargo bay. A green lev faded into view through the distorted image of sky and ground behind it.
A door opened and automatic weapon fire rang out, sending the Apostates to the floor again. Someone was hit, and Jang, without shutting his own lev off, realized Uzziah had not yet activated the grav-compensators on the main ship. Jang disengaged the compensation thrusters on the dragon lev, engaged the z-drive, and dove from the pilot’s seat.
As Six held down the head of one child, he saw another child take a bullet in the arm, and he felt as if his own heart had exploded in his chest. By the time he realized what he was doing, Six was already charging forward, spear in hand, dodging between levs. Suddenly, as he had moved behind the dragon-shaped lev, it lifted up from the cargo bay and Taewook of Cups flew out of it. The lev moved away from both of them at an alarming speed. It collided with the now visible glimmer ship with a screeching crash, sending two soldiers to the floor and the others back into the ship as it slid toward the cargo bay door. The head of the dragon flew off as the lorry flipped and flew out of the bay to roll across the barren Ashan plain. The glimmer ship slid to the edge of the hold, screeching the whole way, but stopped just at the caution line before the door. The men stood to fire again, but Six was already between them, impaling one through his stomach and then bringing the other end of his spear up beneath the assault rifle of the other. Six twisted the spear head inside the first and then snatched it out and around, flinging bits of entrails through the air as he brought it across the other’s face. As they fell, Six turned to the door leading inside the glimmer ship, but there were already two assault rifles pointed at his chest.
Cyrus had to push two women and a child out of the way as he burst through the doorway to the cargo hold. As he ran across the large cargo bay, he could hear whimpering children and adults as they crawled and stumbled toward the main hold of the ship. A man’s leg buckled and he collapsed as Cyrus moved past him. The gunfire stopped, and Cyrus drew his sidearm as he ran toward Six, who was cutting through the two men who had initially opened fire. As Cyrus ran, he saw Six jump to his right, flipping his legs over his head in an aerial, and Cyrus instinctively dropped to the ground into a slide as rifle fire erupted again. The screaming and cries had died down now, and Cyrus assumed most of the Apostates had made it inside. Six rotated further away fro
m the door as Cyrus slid to a halt. Cyrus balanced his right wrist over his left arm and fired two single shots at the doorway. One hit the side of the ship, but the second sent one of the gunmen back into the darkness of their craft. More gunfire came from the doorway as someone moved up to take the place of the fallen soldier. Cyrus rolled across the ground behind Taeryn’s fighter as bullets hit the ground behind him and then tracked toward him, sparking across the edge of the lev. Then he heard a scream echo out of the glimmer ship through a pause in the gunfire and a clatter against the metal of the cargo bay floor. When he peeked around the edge of the fighter, Cyrus saw the tip of Six’s spear stabbed through the wrist of the man who had replaced the fallen soldier. The spear pinned the man’s arm to the inside of the glimmer ship door frame. Blood spurted from the wound, and the soldier next to him slipped, but managed to reach his rifle around the edge and fire. Six’s body buckled as his leg and wrists must have taken hits. He grunted and stumbled. The rifle fire, at that range, would have shattered bones and damaged vital tissues, even if they did not manage to penetrate the Comptex.
Six grabbed a panel to maintain his fottling, but the panel fell away from the ship. He pressed the panel to the ground, halting his own descent with it. As he propped himself up, he saw the panel had revealed a hose leading to the rear of the glimmer ship. A gunshot rang out from behind Cyrus, and then another, and the man who had shot Six fell back into the ship.
Cyrus didn’t even look to see who was firing. He leapt from behind the lev and ran toward the glimmer ship, but another soldier stepped forward. Six tried to move, but his leg would not support his weight. Six grabbed the hose to steady himself, but as Cyrus ran toward him, he realized Six was not trying to gain leverage at all.
From what Cyrus had heard, the glimmer ships needed an immense amount of power to create the illusion of invisibility. The domes of Eurydice and Druvidia that the glimmer ships mimicked used the light that they absorbed during their day cycles to power the interference waves they created during the night cycles. But these ships, tiny in comparison, would have needed to be able to play their tricks of light even in complete darkness, and that expenditure would have taxed their fusion cores to the limit—but they would still need to move, often while they were cloaked. So when Six snatched the hose away from the ship, steadied himself with the end of his spear, pulled his sidearm from his waist with his other hand, and jammed the barrel into the tube, Cyrus knew exactly what he was doing—and it horrified him.