Lander

by J. Scott Coatsworth

  XANDER LED his small party down the Orn, keeping a watch out for hoversports. Several times they dropped into the forest to avoid them, but either the enforcers on board didn’t detect them or they were bound for somewhere else more important.

  He’d spread his host thin and wide to protect them. It also made foraging easier, as each cell would look after itself. If he were honest with himself, he was also happy to be shed of the responsibility of them all. He was no born leader. He was more of a lone wolf, and being looked to as the answer to everyone’s problems made his scalp itch.

  Quince and Kadin had both talked about prophecy, but he was really just bumbling around, hoping he’d do the right thing. Whatever that was.

  When they reached the House of the Stars, a landmark he knew would provide them shelter, they circled it several times, looking for any signs that it was occupied.

  The sun was close to setting, and he was exhausted from the fight and the long day of flight.

  Maybe it was a bad idea to go to such a recognizable place, but he didn’t know much else of this world, and it was where he’d first started having feelings for Jameson. He needed to revisit it, to see what he felt now.

  He set down in the courtyard. It was as empty and forlorn as the first time he had come here. Moss grew in the cracks, and a cool wind blew up from the sea.

  He peered inside the castle through the doorway. The main hall was empty. “Hello?” His voice echoed through the structure, but there was no reply. “I think we’re safe.”

  Alia and the others—Harrol, Rix, and Zenia—followed him inside.

  “There are some old orchards out there—”

  “Let’s see what we can find for dinner,” Alia said. They nodded, dropped their carry sacks, and followed her outside.

  Xander shot her a thankful look. He’d hoped for time alone.

  He climbed the stairs to the round room with the balcony, where he’d taken his first flight with Jameson. How much had changed since then.

  He stepped outside and put his hands on the railing. It was still warm from the sun, despite the chill wind. He remembered the hug he’d gotten from Jameson when they’d come back to earth.

  You taught me how to fly. Jameson’s words drifted back to him.

  Down below, in the garden, the other skythane had spread out to look for food. The golden statue of Erro stared up at him, beautiful in the sunlight. Erro, like the name Quince had used for the whole world.

  He had found Jameson lying there at the base of the statue, weak from contact with it. Held him in his lap—Jameson had fit so perfectly there.

  He looked down at his fingernails. It was all a sham.

  Angry now, he turned away and reentered the castle, storming down the stairs.

  He would get things ready for his camp mates. That was a good way to work off his angry, nervous energy.

  By the time they returned, he had a small camp set up in one corner of the room. It was full dark outside now, and the rays of Titania’s moon Bandia shone through one of the casements.

  He wondered what had happened to Hermia and Lysander, Oberon’s moons. Were they still tethered to the combined planets’ gravitational well? Or had they flown off into the dark void of space after the shift? He presumed the former, as they had survived the last shift, seven hundred and fifty years before.

  “We found a few things.” Alia held up some big redfruit.

  Rix held up a handful of dirty tubers. “Once we wash them off, they’ll be delicious,” they said. “Wish we could risk a fire. They’re great cooked.”

  “We’ll make do,” Xander said. “Harroll, anything?”

  “Yeah, some hoarberries.” He grinned. “They look pretty ripe too.”

  “I still have a little dried bread left.” Xander opened his pack. “A feast fit for a king.”

  Alia nodded. “Kind of, by default.”

  Xander chuckled. She had a point. “Let’s eat.”

  They shared their findings. Rix was as good as their word and washed off the tubers in a nearby stream.

  They fell into conversation, Rix, Harrol, and Zenia with their heads together on one side of the fireplace and Alia and Xander on the other.

  “You did well back there.” Alia chewed on some of the hard bread. “At the ceremony.”

  “Thanks. They needed a reason to keep going.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, then went back to her meal. “I know this is hard for you,” she said softly.

  “You have no fucking idea.” He wasn’t cut out for this. A couple weeks earlier, he’d been a freelancer for OberCorp, with a life that made sense and a clean place to sleep every night. Now he was all kinds of screwed up.

  She snorted. “You haven’t been keeping it so secret.” She looked straight ahead. “You were much happier when Jameson was here.”

  “You know why I can’t be with him right now.” He bit off a piece of his bread. It was getting hard, but it still tasted all right.

  “Yeah, I do.” Alia sighed. “Quince. You know she was only doing what she had to—”

  “Don’t defend her. She could have just asked for what she needed.”

  “Maybe so.” She bit her lip.

  He glanced sideways at her. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be an ass.”

  She laughed. “It just comes naturally to you?”

  He couldn’t argue with that. “Maybe so. Do you think I was wrong to let him go?”

  Alia shrugged. “You had your reasons.”

  “But do you think I was wrong?”

  “Look, people fall for each other in many ways. Sometimes they’re in a forced marriage and come to love one another after years. Sometimes it’s that whole crazy love-at-first-sight thing. I’ve fallen for someone I spent a lot of time with, just because I got to see a side of him I’d never known before.”

  “None of that’s like being drugged into love.”

  “Maybe not. But if you close your eyes, is Jameson someone you can see yourself with in twenty years?”

  Xander tried. And goddammit, he was.

  He shook his head in frustration. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t trust my feelings. That’s what kills me. Maybe he is the right one. But how the hell can I know for sure? How will I ever know it’s not just a drug-induced emotion?” He threw the redfruit core in his hand across the room. “That’s what Quince took from me.”

  “You okay?” Rix asked from the other side of the fireplace. Their eyes were narrowed in concern.

  “Yeah, sorry. Just let my anger get the best of me.” He closed his eyes, thinking back to the first time he’d seen Jameson, when the man, a lander, walked out of the immigration center. Adorable in his conservative suit. And later, at Xander’s storage unit, his brown eyes sparkling with indignant anger.

  He’d thought Jameson just needed shaking up. Well, they’d gotten that, and a helluva lot more.

  Alia put her hand on his arm.

  He looked up at her, questioning.

  “You’ll figure things out.”

  Xander snorted. “Easy for you to say.”

  “Maybe so. But I’ve seen you tested, Xander. You’re one of the good ones.” She squeezed his shoulder and stood to go talk with the others, giving him time alone.

  He picked up one of the peeled tubers and bit into it. It was crisp and just a little sweet. He sat back, determined to enjoy the little space of quiet time he’d been granted, away from the maddening fray of love and war.

  Chapter Fifteen: Restless

  IT HAD to be past midnight.

  Jameson and Alix had fallen into a steady rhythm over the last few hours. Find a skythane refugee fleeing the OberCorp attack, open a waygate and shove them through to Bolcà Isle—the island several hours out into the Argent Sea that he’d seen in one of his visions. Then hop across the city through another waygate once the OberCorp forces found him.

  The island was far enough from Errian to provide momentary safety, and had ample water in its volca
nic crater lagoon.

  He’d sent Venin there first, and had given him instructions to get the refugees settled. The man had woken up groggy but otherwise seemingly undamaged by the martach’s venom, thanks to Alix’s quick action.

  Errian had taken heavy damage. Jameson had counted at least fifty hoversports, slipping in and out of the city, making strafing runs against the population. The ships’ pulse cannons were set to stun—apparently, they wanted to corral the populace, not kill them, but when your adversary was airborne, casualties were inevitable.

  One of the skythane flew by, a young woman with red wings.

  Jameson opened a waygate between them, and suddenly she was flying through it and into Alix’s arms. He caught her with the ease of long practice.

  Her face lit up with fear.

  “It’s okay. We’re here to help you.”

  Jameson closed the waygate and opened another leading to Bolcà Isle. “People are waiting for you there.” He pointed to the waygate.

  “Who are you?”

  “Lyrin, King of the Erriani.” He squeezed her hand. “Now go!”

  She nodded, white as a sheet, and fled through the waygate.

  Jameson snapped it closed as soon as she was clear.

  “Jameson!”

  His head snapped around to where Alix was pointing.

  Two of the hoversports circled around toward them, coming in hot and low.

  Jameson grabbed Alix and together they tumbled through a newly created waygate as an explosion blew flames through from the place they’d just left. They landed in the shallow pool of water in front of the waterfall, and the flames snuffed out as the gate snapped shut.

  “Shit, that was close.” Alix was soaked.

  “I’m so glad you’re here to help.” Jameson trudged out of the pool.

  “Not that I’m doing much.”

  “You kidding? You just saved both of our asses back there.” He scanned the city.

  “Glad to do something, I guess.” Alix joined him, and Jameson was acutely aware of the man’s sweaty, masculine presence. “Where now, boss?”

  Jameson pointed. “Things seem kinda heavy down there, by the water.”

  Alix grinned. “Back into the fire.”

  QUINCE AWOKE in the darkness. They’d found shelter under a grove of wempoles—short, squat trees that had thick canopies of wide purple leaves and fragrant white flowers the size of two open hands, which smelled like vanilla and honey. Silver moonlight filtered through the leaves, creating a beautiful filigree pattern across the dead leaves on the forest floor.

  Robyn was fast asleep next to her.

  Something had disturbed Quince’s sleep.

  Since there were only two of them, they had decided it was more important to move quickly and to get sleep where they could than to post watch. Quince doubted OberCorp had penetrated this far north. There was nothing there for them to take.

  Something rustled in the darkness. Quince sat up, looking for the source of the noise. There were animals in the forest. She stared into the moonlit darkness.

  Two human eyes peered back at her.

  Quince tapped Robyn’s shoulder, then shook her, but Robyn remained asleep, as if she’d been drugged. Quince reached for her knife.

  Whomever it was stepped forward into a beam of moonlight.

  Quince gasped. It was Morgan.

  Quince put down the knife and jumped up to embrace him. He put his arms hesitantly around her.

  “You’re here.” She held him out at arm’s length to get a good look at him. “How is it possible that you’re here?”

  He looked the same. A freckled waif with floppy black hair, solemn faced and fragile. She wasn’t fooled. She’d seen what he could do. “Not here.”

  Not here? She was touching him. She could feel the warmth of his skin in her hands. Confused, she knelt to look him in the eyes. “What do you mean?”

  He pointed.

  She looked over her shoulder to see herself asleep in her torn and tattered sleep sack.

  “I’m dreaming.” She turned to look at him again. He looked as normal as ever. “Why are you here?”

  “They are coming. In seven days.”

  “Who? Who’s coming?” She was sick and tired of these cryptic communications—dreams and visions, short responses to her questions that really told her nothing.

  “The Ithani. You must hurry.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “I need you.”

  “Why can’t you come here?”

  He shook his head. “Can’t leave. They won’t let me.”

  “Who?” Someone was holding him hostage?

  “The others, like me.”

  “Morgan, what are you?”

  For an answer, he spun around and flung his arms into the air. They extended into wings, beautiful iridescent multicolored wings. Then he dissolved into nothing.

  Quince awoke. She sat up and looked wildly around.

  Morgan was gone.

  She shook Robyn gently, and this time she woke up. “What’s happening?” She glared at Quince through half-lidded eyes. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “We have to go. We’re running out of time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Morgan was here, Robyn. He spoke to me.”

  Robyn sat up. “Where? I don’t see him.” She rubbed her eyes.

  “I think he’s a nimfeach. Or something similar. Remember how we met?”

  Now Robyn looked fully awake. “How could I forget?”

  Quince remembered the nimfeach she’d seen in the forest, outside Ballifor. The alien creature who had told her she had a destiny. The beautiful butterfly who had set her on the path she followed to this day, more than twenty-five years later. “I don’t know how, or why, but I swear to you he was here. He said something… the Ithani… are coming. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Robyn shook her head. “Not at all, but if you say we have to go, we’ll go. Though I was hoping for a few more hours of sleep.”

  “Thank you.” Quince leaned forward and kissed her. “Gods, how I’ve missed you.”

  In less than fifteen minutes, they’d eaten a cold meal, packed their camp, and had taken once again to the skies under Bandia’s silver light.

  JAMESON HUDDLED behind a broken wall, his back pressed against the strangely yielding surface.

  Alix was crouched next to him, scowling.

  The sun was just peeking over the crater walls that framed the eastern end of the city, which Jameson figured was left over from a massive meteoric impact, thousands—or hundreds of thousands—of years before. Water gushed over the edge of the wall where a part of the Orn plunged onto the crater valley.

  Jameson was exhausted.

  The two of them were huddled inside the shell of one of the organic towers of Errian. It had been sheared off by something heavier than pulse cannon fire and lay like a fallen tree along one of the city’s winding streets. It had grazed another tower as it fell, and that one teetered on the edge of collapse too.

  Jameson wanted to kick himself. He should have gotten there sooner. He should have used the key to make a waygate in the midst of the city on the first try, consequences be damned. Maybe he would have been able to warn them, to organize them before the OberCorp forces arrived.

  “How long can you keep this up?” Alix asked. His face was ashen.

  “As long as I have to. These people need me.”

  “Down!” Alix pulled him to the ground as a hoversport zoomed by three meters over their heads. It kept going.

  “Come on. I want to see what they’re up to now.” The landers had set up a staging area in the center of Errian, in the great white plaza called First Square. Jameson had scouted it out earlier. He opened a waygate to a spot on a small tree-covered hill in the midst of the square that would give them some cover.

  Hoversports were landing in the square with regularity, disgorging captured skythane in ones and twos, their wings banded at the base with metal.<
br />
  One flew in from the Argent Sea, larger than the others. It settled in the middle of the square, and a skythane man got out.

  Even from this distance, Jameson recognized him. It was the man of his nightmares—Danner Black—the one who had killed his mother. He looked older, gray streaking his long hair.

  Behind him was a petite blonde woman, her hands tied behind her back.

  “Holy crap.” Jameson could hardly believe his eyes. “What the hell is she doing here?”

  “Who?”

  “That’s my fiancée. Jessa.” He leapt toward the square, but Alix pulled him back.

  “What are you trying to do?”

  “I have to save her! She came here because of me.”

  “Probably. But you’re exhausted. And I’d bet the key is too.”

  “What?”

  “Amalite works by absorbing energy around it. Heat, light, static, etc. It’s like a little self-charging battery. They use it for the hoversports, and charge it up every night. I’ll bet you’ve come close to using it up with all this activity. And yourself too, from the looks of you.”

  They had hustled Jessa into the largest tower now, the one that fronted the square. Jameson tore his gaze away from the plaza. “What if they do something to her?”

  Alix shook his head. “She’s bait. They must figure word will get back to you, or else have some way to let you know. Otherwise they will use her against you when they know you’re here. It’s classic OberCorp tactics.”

  “Like they wanted to use you against Xander.”

  “Yes.”

  Jameson sighed. “She shouldn’t have come.”

  “Does she know?”

  “About Xander and me?”

  Alix snorted. “About any of it. That you like men. That you’re skythane. That you’re the fucking King of Errian.”

  “No. I don’t think so.” They hadn’t spoken since he came to Oberon, and as far as his sexuality, how could she? He’d hidden it even from himself. He pulled out the holo of her he’d retrieved from the waystation. “I’m sorry, Jessa.”

  “Oooh, she looks feisty.”

  “Yeah, she is.” He grinned. “She was a reporter back on Beta Tau, and brought down one of the most corrupt businessmen on the planet. Got her bumped up to anchor.”