Perfect Gravity

by Vivien Jackson

  Rafa kept primping, feeding her cues, and Fez kept transmitting on all channels, real-time and balls-out. She’d gone live with all of it, the disrobing and preparing, her steady reaction as news items filtered through, as petition signatures soared, as bombs fell. Not hiding where she was, not hiding her intentions. Nothing was sacred. If somebody on this continent didn’t know who she was or where she was headed, that was their own damn fault. No secrets, no lies. Only justice.

  Alerts descended like party confetti. The UNAN security corps broke for her all up and down the West Coast, marching and chanting, “Soy el fuego! Viva la unificación!”

  Refugees took up the call, pointing their wrath squarely at President Medina. Federal warehouses were raided in Quebec. Power grids went down in Oaxaca, and protesters planned their marches by torchlight. Stop the drones, they screamed. Stop the fire.

  Because their continent was burning, only now it wasn’t just Zeke on the offensive. Angela and her team had joined the fray. She pushed back. She resisted.

  All over the unified nation, locks were coming undone. Hangars emptied themselves, disgorging rows on rows of war machines. They accepted Angela’s command codes without question, because that’s what machines did. Drones rose, filling the sky, and then exploded like fireworks.

  Teamwork. She wasn’t alone at all.

  “How’s it going, Chloe?” she asked, not looking down. “How long can you keep this up?”

  “As long as I must,” the nanorobotic AI replied with fierce solemnity. “Give me another target.”

  Because Chloe had learned a lesson from mech-Daniel. Chloe recorded things. Things like Heron’s remote-rigging process. And she replicated things, too, all over this landmass, a flurry of self-recursion, learning, mastering command systems in the time it took a human person to blink. She was in satellites and live feeds and entertainment consoles and smartbombs. In helicopters and planes and landjets and drones. If somebody had a free-fae light full of nanites in their dining room or street-corner bodega, Chloe appropriated it and incorporated all those component pieces into herself. Her self grew. Every nano within her reach became part of her, became vengeance. In the skies above soft targets, her intercepts did not miss.

  Chloe was out, a pervasive net of thou-shalt-not, standing between Zeke’s bombs and her people. Illegal, hysterical, call her whatever you wanted, nobody was sticking this genie back in a bottle.

  No secrets. No lies.

  Angela, Rafa, and Fez hurtled north, toward the Capitoline, and rioters in Atlanta, Chicago, Vancouver, and Veracruz celebrated the arrival of air support for their cause. Angela’s revolution had their backs, and that’s all the spark they needed. They stormed government buildings, demanding vote recounts, demanding to be seen. To be heard.

  Charleston, Portland, Fairchild, and Beale came online, Chloe’s birds in the air, raining justice. Forcing this government to listen. To pause. Just fucking pause.

  “Time consumes us all in fire,” Angela said to the camera. “El Presidente, I am coming for you. And I am the fire.”

  Fez signaled cut. The lights dimmed, but slow.

  She hadn’t slept in almost a full day, and her emotions had been frayed to begin with. But she didn’t have time to pause or rest. He’d heard her warning, Zeke had, and he’d not only thrown it back in her face, he’d upped the attacks, made them personal. He’d brought down the fucking Pentarc.

  It hadn’t been her home, but it had been Kellen’s. And Kellen was as close to home as she’d ever get or ever want. She took attacks against him personally, because he represented everything good in her. She ached for him, couldn’t close her eyes without seeing his face in her memory, the stark horror he’d shown in the second he heard the news of his family.

  She blinked, seeing the image on the backs of her eyelids, vid from a reconnaissance craft. Part of Northy still rose above the desert, but the other spires were simply gone, heaps of steaming, dust-shrouded bones.

  “Do we have enough content?” she asked.

  “Yes, we do. Now sit down, honey,” Rafa said, taking her hand and attempting to pull her to one of the bolted-down chairs. “You’ve had a really shitty day.”

  “We have all had a shitty day,” she said. “Loop it. And let’s get to work.”

  • • •

  Never in all his years would Kellen have expected to wake up, rested but empty, staring into the face of Damon Vallejo, that old asshole himself.

  It was a kindly face today, though, no malice writ there, and no danger. He’d been looking at something. A book? When he saw he was being watched, Vallejo folded it closed and placed it on his lap.

  Kellen scrubbed a hand over his eyes, knuckling the sleep out. “Where we at?”

  “In the air over Arizona. We should be touching down shortly. Your friend Garrett said to let you rest as long as you could.”

  They’d boarded the spaceplane in Tampico, right after Angela had headed off to spark up her rebellion. Kellen couldn’t think how he’d been able to sleep. Dreamlessly, even. He wondered if Garrett or Chloe had altered the air mix in the plane. He wouldn’t fuss at them if they had. He was so often on the other side, but sometimes, it felt good to be cared for.

  “Pentarc, it’s…any word?”

  The old man looked down at the book. He stroked the frayed cloth binding.

  Kellen sat up, grabbed for his com, and realized it wasn’t on his arm. Aw, fuck a monkey, man, he was naked. Or partway so. He’d had the forethought to pull the longjohns part of his dive suit on before climbing out of the sub, but the rest of the smartfabric hung loose around his waist. He fiddled with the flop of sleeve, found the pouch, found his com. “Yoink? What’s our status, girl?”

  She didn’t reply through the com right away. Probably because she was loitering right next to his bunk. At the sound of her name, she leapt onto his lap, sat back on her haunches, and gazed up at him, serious as the business end of a cannon. “Awake is good. We are good. Coyotes are good. They call. Javelinas dig. We will be home soon.”

  So no word from down below. And the wild things dug. Didn’t sound good.

  He felt the plane beneath his feet, observed its familiar cramped quarters. He’d been sleeping back in the racks, bunks for folk who needed rest. A haven in the air.

  Heron kept a footlocker here full of things he picked up, all over the world, always with his Mari in mind. Trinkets he’d stored up for years, just waiting to give her. Had he gotten a chance to?

  God, please don’t end it like this.

  His voice was far from steady when he asked, “We heard from Angela?”

  Vallejo sighed. “Only every five seconds. Her face has been plastered on every channel I could find, all morning long. You were clever to get rest, but I really don’t know how she endures. Fine woman. Scary woman. If I were Zeke Medina today, I would be very, very concerned.”

  “That’s my Angela,” Kellen said, but it sounded hollow, even to him.

  They’d covered this, but the separation still twinged. She needed to get on the vids, get her voice out there, force Medina to stop. And he needed to get to the Pentarc as fast as possible. He needed to find his people. They both had promises to keep.

  And it wasn’t like he and Angela hadn’t spent most of the last decade apart. Only something had changed there in the com room on the submarine. Neither of them had spoken a promise out loud, but he felt like one had been made. His soul had sealed itself to her, whether she wanted it or not.

  What he felt wasn’t even want anymore. He needed her. Here, with him.

  There wasn’t a psych-emitter on board the plane, but Kellen looked down and tapped a quick darknet message: By our superior energies and strict affiance in each other, we will kick their asses.

  Yoink nuzzled his wrist, directing his hand over her wee head. She didn’t purr, just pushed herself into his palm. He
did like his gals bossy.

  Pentarc gone. Friends, family trapped in the dark, underground. God. This plane could not travel fast enough to chase all the horror from its path.

  He wanted to weep. He wanted to grab up that sweet little kitty, hold her against his face, and cry like a baby.

  His com vibrated, and he looked down. She’d replied: You quote for shit, pretty boy. We’re the good guys.

  He would have grinned if his soul weren’t so damn sore. Still, the words were exactly what he needed. He could hear her voice saying them. It was almost like she was here. Space apart was physical, and their relationship was bigger than that.

  He huffed out a hot breath. “I got a change of clothes in one of these footlockers, gramps. Best you clear out unless you wanna watch me get all the way nekkid.”

  Vallejo rose, slowly, the book of Mexican poetry in his hands. Probably not his book. More likely Heron’s. Jesus.

  “Gramps,” Vallejo repeated, tasting the word. “I had always hoped, thought maybe…a-and I know she’s not Mari, not really. I know she loathes me as I have loathed her. But if you find her… Just find her. Please.”

  Tears in his dark eyes, he scurried from the racks, out into the corridor crammed with equipment and memory.

  Chapter 17

  Digging. They’d been digging all day, in the cold acrid dust. Kellen had hollered until he didn’t have any voice left, and his eyes burned. Probably had particulates lodged in there. Things that eddied in this air ought never be breathed. Ought never touch tears. The world smelled like drywall and burnt hair, and the digging, the searching, the hoping—the sick encroachment of despair—would never end.

  At first it was just the three of them—Kellen, Garrett, and Vallejo—on the pile. Chloe was off doing something important and terrifying. They pulled and hauled, unceasing. Kellen caught a look at Garrett’s hands at one point, bleeding from every knuckle, with antibac cotton rounds and medical tape binding his fists, but his face was set, his gold eyes swimming, and there wasn’t any deterring him.

  Kellen didn’t have much thought for his own comfort or safety, either. He’d told Yoink to stay back on the plane, though, coordinate from there. She had a facility for cataloging and deploying assets, and she could let him know if anything big happened in the outside world.

  She could relay Angela’s voice into his earpiece, which comforted him way more than it ought.

  When they’d gotten here, both wild and augmented animals had been at the pile already for a long half day. Yoink sorted them according to skills, put them where they’d do most good. As she said, those javelinas sure could dig.

  There weren’t any towns nearby, not for miles, but somehow, within hours of their plane’s touchdown, people around here learned of the hit. And they came. Strangers, with food and kind words and strong silence. Strangers who tied bio-filtering scarves over their faces, checked in with General Yoink. And dug.

  Mostly they didn’t talk, but sometimes he’d hear a word or two, scraps of conversation making its way down a bucket brigade. Recollections, and some thanks. Some of these strangers had come through the Pentarc and had moved on once they got their legs beneath them, steady. They came back now, out of gratitude. Maybe a hundred of them, and all before sunset, dressed for the desert night this side of winter. They weren’t leaving. Somebody drove a ratty RV out onto the sand, and somebody else arranged a row of grills, fired them up, heated water in pots. Campfires sprang up like twilight wildflowers, but the atmosphere wasn’t a party. Nobody sang.

  They needed more shovels.

  The dust and debris were so thick in the air, and with the sun on its way down, he didn’t notice a flurry or the one that followed. And when the temblor of voices arrived at his back, he paid it no mind. He was so tired, worn down like old shoes. Hope thinned as daylight died.

  “No, his name is Kellen. Kellen Hockley. About so tall, gold hair? He’s been here all day.”

  A surge of movement among the others. He turned.

  There, striding across the desert, dressed in plain, serviceable clothes and—hot damn, were those cowboy boots? On her feet?—was his woman. His angel.

  She saw him right about the same time he saw her, and she lit out across the desert in his direction. Bless her, he hoped she didn’t mean for him to run as well. He stood there, and she barreled into him, pushed her slight body against him, buried her face in the hollow below his throat. Which might have been why he found it so hard to swallow.

  His arms came around her slowly, but they got tight pretty quickly, once his mind admitted she was real. “Thought you were off rousing yourself a revolution, princess.”

  She leaned back, looked up at him, blinking against the toxic air and gathering night. “Duly underway. One more bomb falls, and I am crashing his goddamn inauguration, as planned. But right now I need to be here. I need to be with you. Please don’t make me go away.”

  He was sobbing. She couldn’t see it ’cause of all the shit in the air, drying out his eyeballs. This was sobbing tearless. He felt the hard, half hiccup rumble in his chest, and she was latched on so tight, she must’ve felt it, too.

  “I’m here,” she was telling him. “We’re going to do this. We’re going to find them. I’ve got you.”

  Why could he believe it more when she said it? He’d believed in all sorts of shit over the years, and disbelieved as many times, but never anything as much as, right at that moment, he believed in her.

  She rose up on tiptoes but still couldn’t reach his mouth. Tiny thing; he always forgot her lack of height. She kissed his chin. Soft lips, warm.

  “I love you,” she said. “And I brought help.”

  He looked over her dark head and saw what she was talking about. The public pod service didn’t run out here, but folks had come anyhow. Folks in mass number. Folks with supplies and skills and cameras and vidcasters. They’d brought their cars out here, beaters and fancy-pants sedans, long-haulers and dune buggies, all rolling out over the desert. Her revolution, but not armed with guns or bombs.

  They’d brought shovels.

  • • •

  She’d thought she would dig, haul, and search until she died from it, just fell over and lights out. But the human body is a terribly efficient machine. At a point, hers just told her it was time. And it was apparently Kellen’s time, too. They didn’t consult each other, just joined hands, checked in with General Yoink, and retreated to a sleek Audi autocar, low to the ground. She didn’t have a clue how it had made it over the uneven scrub brush to get here. It was technological magic, making this day endurable.

  Its owner was on a bucket brigade and had left the lock open, on purpose. The car had heat. Blessed, wonderful heat, thawing her half-frozen body. She took off her boots and coat, and Kellen wrapped himself around her in silence, warming her the rest of the way.

  She set a timer on her com. Four hours.

  There were things she needed to say to this man. Questions, confessions, reassurances. In the past, she might have wanted to tell him all her plans, soak in his inevitable compliments on her cleverness. But this wasn’t that kind of day. Nothing that had happened in the last twenty-four hours was about her, yet the events had cut her to the very root, tiny slices that bled in regrets and would never stop.

  Which was fine. She was trained to endure horrors that weren’t hers, to take on pain she hadn’t volunteered her heart to hold.

  “Someday,” he murmured right before sleep took him, “someday I’m gonna lay you down in a comfy spot, someplace worthy of the queen you are. Fuck all these cars ’n’ subs ’n’ shit.”

  If he’d wanted to fuck that night, she could have made it happen. Just being near him ignited parts of her body like that’s what they were designed for. She could have comforted him in a thousand ways. Because she loved him, and also because she was trained to see to the comforts of others, emotion
ally if not physically. But this was Kellen. Comfort for him was holding the things he loved safe. So she let him hold her, and she held him right back.

  It was enough.

  But in the end, they didn’t have four hours.

  At 3:22 on her timer, somebody rapped at the car door. When she opened it, a chubby twentysomething girl with black hair and face made darker by the night passed along a message. There was somebody coming from the west, on foot. Running. He kept repeating names, and was she Garrett, Kellen, or Chloe?

  She woke Kellen, and they followed the girl out, around the southern edge of destruction.

  Somebody had sent out a pickup to fetch the runner, which brought him faster to the main hub of the camp.

  “His name is Kellen,” she called out, dragging him along by the hand. A tangle of people surrounded the pickup. He clutched her hand so tight her bones creaked, and the crowd parted to let them pass.

  The bruise of a cloud over this whole area blocked out any moonlight from the sky, but folks had com lights, a dozen or more of them, camera lights, too, all pointed at the truck. She saw him, the runner. Balanced in a crouch in the dirt-dusted bed, serene and still, searching the crowd for longed-for faces.

  Dan-Dan.

  He looked like he’d been through a meat grinder. The hands capping his bent knees were worn down to the metal beneath, and strips of vat-grown flesh dangled like party streamers from the cuffs of his long-sleeved poly shirt. All his clothes were stained dark in streaks. Very likely, he had already bled out, and the circulatory mechanism that kept him looking humanlike had died some hours back. There wasn’t enough wound glue on this continent to fix what had been done to his face. He looked like a monster, but there was something warm in his ruined face, in his posture, something infinitely kind. It was recognition, one person of another.

  “Please stop digging,” the mech-clone said. “We aren’t down there. We went to the tunnels, westward. There are miles of them, but they’re underground, too deep to establish any kind of communications, and I’m afraid we are trapped there currently. We have some injuries, but all our people are accounted for. Your animals, too, Doc.”