“Beyond some. A lot of it, frankly, and it’s used in every petty argument you can imagine. But we’ll discuss that after you get inside, meet my family, and get the road grime off of you. You need food, medical care, and some quiet. You survived a high-altitude entry, a crash, and a fall. I’d say you need to recharge your luck batteries before something bad happens to you.” He snorted softly at his own joke, and a pretty woman with brown hair and dark eyes stepped through the gates, a mass of children swarming around her.
“My wife, Tilde. This is Nolan, freshly delivered from the jump point and still a bit confused about our little paradise,” Crowe said over the babble of kids all speaking at once.
Tilde shook Nolan’s hand, her fingers long and warm. Her smile was brilliant, and she had the distinct scar of an implant on her left temple. “Twelve years. Came down like a meteor about a hundred klicks from here, in case you were wondering.”
“I was,” Nolan said, slightly abashed that he’d stared at her implant point. “Where were you from?”
“Shipborn, but spent a lot of time near the Deadworlds until my family was able to secure a port job. To be honest, that jump point is the best thing that ever happened to me. After you, of course.” Tilde gave Crowe a pat on his cheek, but he still acted wounded.
“Appreciate being in your home,” Nolan said as they walked through the gate. The height of their location was stealthy—they’d climbed a hundred meters or more up the plain, and now, looking back, Nolan could see the crash site high on the mountain, once Cherry adjusted his eye. “Thick gates. That’s a big rifle, too, and I don’t see any flatback paths coming this far up the rocks.” Nolan paused and leveled a gaze at Tilde, and then Crowe. “And you have critters like dogs. Good for security, as well as teaching the kids?”
Crowe looked around at the chattering brood of kids, relieved they hadn’t grasped the meaning of my question. “Let’s go have something to eat after you meet the rest of the family. Then we’ll talk.”
“Sounds good.” Nolan let a broad smile crease his face as an array of children and a few teenagers crowded around, hurling questions at a pace that left some of them out of breath. After thirty minutes, they were dismissed to chores, play, or, for the teens, something on the top level that looked a lot like a watchtower. The homes were open and airy, but all were equipped with wooden shutters that overlapped with a precision that revealed they weren’t just for keeping out breezes.
Sunward had secrets, and it appeared Nolan would wait until after breakfast to learn them.
In all, there were just over forty people at Sunward. Nolan met three more adults and a handful of teenagers, one a young man verging into adulthood. All had been born on the planet with the exception of Crowe, Tilde, and a planetary geologist named Ratilovich, who was busy working to fix some broken gear they’d salvaged from a wreck a few months earlier. The items were Royal manufacture, and Rat, as he was called, had them spread out over a workspace that looked like a junkyard had been hit by an orbital weapon. It was two rooms of utter chaos, but Rat probably thought the rooms were in a kind of perfect disorder. Nolan had seen his kind before on Brightline. They might look scatterbrained, but that was just how they worked, and it was best not to try helping them in any way.
Rat was painfully skinny, tall, and nearly bald, wearing a leather headband that held a high-quality augmented lens over his right eye. It wasn’t far off from what Nolan had installed in his body, though his was undoubtedly scaled for engineering tasks rather than military and survival. After a brief, distracted chat, Crowe and Nolan moved along, breakfast being done. They walked a path to the top of the cliff, where a sentry post covered the western approach to Sunward.
Ten minutes later, they had followed the winding path to find a view that was nearly as spectacular as Nolan’s crash site. Below, the plain spread out, but with his eye, Nolan could see behind the cliff face as well, where a silver river snaked away into thick forests and a chain of small lakes.
“I see why you built here,” Nolan said.
“I didn’t build anything. Well, we’ve added to it, but there was a fortress here, if you can call three floors and that pitiful wall a fort,” Crowe said. His tone was bitter, and I knew there had to be a reason.
“Why did you bring me up here?”
“So you can have a glimpse of something peaceful. Before it isn’t peaceful.” Crowe pointed to the east, where the cliff rose even higher. There was a sandy area, high and dry, and in it a small sign that read Graves.
Nolan was silent as Cherry counted the distant cairns of rock, calculating the total losses of people who were desperately trying to make a life of peace. And failing.
The sky split with a wail as a white-hot streak began to carve a long arc through the thin clouds above us. Crowe looked up, then at Nolan, and then he just looked sad.
“Too hot. They won’t make it,” he said.
“Cherry—” Nolan said, but she was already adjusting his vision again to track the item. It snapped into focus-- a shuttle designed to hold less than a dozen people.
It was coming apart in the upper atmosphere.
“It’ll be over in a minute,” Crowe said, and he was right.
The shuttle bloomed into a white cloud, punctuated by glittering fragments of alloy that cooked off in brilliant points of light, and then it was over. No one made it out, and there wasn’t a piece of the shuttle bigger than a human fist.
Crowe and Nolan fell into an awkward silence as the contrail was twisted by upper winds, and then there was nothing left except drifting vapors. It was over.
“How often does that happen?” Nolan asked.
“I don’t know, because I don’t have a satellite network, but I’m guessing that jump point is one of the deadliest features in space. We see one or two a week here during the active periods, but not every orbital entry is manned. Sometimes they’re wrecks, abandoned missile platforms, things like that, but still—this planet is the bottom of a drain, and that drain is the jump point,” Crowe said.
“Were all of those graves from people who came down like that and didn’t make it?” Nolan asked, pointing to the stone cairns.
Crowe grew very still, and an air of sadness formed around him. “No. Those are all mine. Ours, I should say. Tilde and I have buried far too many people here, and that’s just the ones we’ve recovered. A lot of them are just—gone.”
“No wonder you built here.”
Crowe gave a small snort of disgust. “Didn’t help out as much as I’d hoped. We feel safe, and we look safe, but we aren’t. If anything, we’re easy pickings here along the cliff.”
“Easy pickings for what?” Nolan asked, wondering what kind of animals could take humans from a place like Sunward.
“Not what. Who. The People of the Clock, we call them, but I suspect they have a different name for themselves. They’ll be here soon; maybe even tomorrow,” Crowe said, his lips twisted in disgust.
“Because they saw my ship come down?”
“Yes.” He cut his eyes to the mountain, where Nolan could see the scar from his capsule’s impact. There was no way to cover it up, but the trail ended on the plain, following the flatback’s old grazing paths. Crowe read Nolan’s thoughts. “They’ll know, and when they find out, they’ll come here for you.”
“How many?”
“A few. They watch the skies and comb the land based on impact sites, but there are enough of them that we can’t fight. Not really,” Crowe said.
Nolan understood. “You have to give me up or build another stone grave, don’t you?”
His only answer was a nod.
Nolan touched his sidearm and thought about the kids down below, their smiling faces and cheery babble. He was only twenty-six years old, and most of them were less than half that. There was a huge difference between being a kid and being an experienced thief, and spacer, and survivor. He had choices. They did not.
Nolan made a choice.
“Do you have a m
ap of this place?” he asked.
“Sunward?” Crowe looked startled.
“No, this planet. And what the hell do you call it, anyway?”
“Janusia. The continent is called Norta, the southern islands are called Upwellings, and the ocean is called—well, the ocean. That big river that splits the entire world is called Finmother, and no, I don’t know why. Near as I can tell, there are a hundred warring clans and nations, all led by some version of me or you or Tilde. Although there are sentients here that are distinctly not human. Not everyone who survives the fall is good, and some of them are just plain terrible,” Crowe said.
“I’m sensing there’s something worse than just terrible?”
He gave a reluctant nod, and his eyes went to the cairns once again. “I’ve spent my entire time here fighting and losing against those bastards. They dress like warrior priests, act like animals, and I have no idea how they got so powerful. Listen to me, Nolan. When they come—and they will be here sooner or later—you’re going to have the urge to kill them. Don’t.”
“Why?” Killing wasn’t Nolan’s natural setting, but there was something dangerous in his expression. Animalistic, and just under the surface.
Cherry sent a direct message. “Easy, Nolan. Your blood pressure is spiking like you’re under attack.”
Maybe I am and just don’t know it yet.
Crowe put a friendly hand on his arm, making Nolan flinch. He’d been on the run and hurt long enough to find kindness an alien concept. What Crowe was describing now—war, predation, fighting—made sense. Crowe looked up at a distant shape in the sky, then waved with disgust.
“Your friends from the clock?” Nolan asked, tracking the shape with his eye. It was an unmanned sensor drone, the kind dropped by geological teams as they entered orbit.
“Don’t know. I know if it comes closer, we have to bring it down.”
They watched the drone begin a long, slow turn, then it was Nolan’s turn to put a hand on Crowe. “Got a rifle I can borrow?”
Ten minutes later, they were standing on the highest point of the cliff ridge, Crowe hidden behind a split boulder and Nolan crouching in a shooting position. The rifle was excellent—a long bore that threw a heavy round with finned guidance.
“I make the range to be four thousand meters,” Nolan told Cherry, silently, keeping that talent to himself. Some cards can only be played once.
“It’s turning again,” Crowe said. “Always whines when it banks hard.”
Nolan tilted his head, listening, and the telltale buzzing of a small engine working hard came drifting across the air, then the wings began to dip. It was turning to come back across the clifftops, a gleaming lens reflecting the camera as it adjusted to catch as much of the inhabited area as possible.
Nolan let a breath out, inhaled, steadied his pulse, and squeezed the trigger in a smooth, easy motion that was neither hurried nor lazy. The rifle banged, releasing a jet of outgassing that flashed brighter than the daytime sun. Two breaths later, the drone shattered, glowing shrapnel continuing forward in an expanding cloud. The shredded drone fell toward Janusia, and he removed the rifle from his shoulder with a satisfied grunt.
“That’s that,” Nolan said.
“For now.” Crowe was staring at the place where the drone had been seconds earlier. He didn’t look happy. He didn’t look angry, either, just had the expression of a man who had no good answer for what came next.
“I’m assuming they’ll send scouts or someone to the last known position?” Nolan asked.
“Something like that,” Crowe said.
“Like it, or exactly like it? Kind of matters for what I’m going to do next.” Wheels were turning in his head. “I need answers, not possibilities.”
“Okay, exactly like that,” Crowe admitted sourly.
“How many scouts?”
“I’ve never seen more than four at a time, and usually pairs. They’re hardened, well-armed, and they travel fast. You ever seen a Loop?” Crowe asked.
“Like the shape?”
“No, like the vehicle. Single wheel, driver sits inside it, and it goes like hell. Wide, soft tire, can roll over anything, and they’re quiet enough that we have a hard time hearing them when they come.” A shadow crossed over his face as he said that, and Nolan wondered what it meant. He didn’t wonder long. “They can grab a kid and be gone in seconds, and there isn’t shit I can do about it. None of us can, and that’s just the scouts.”
“Let’s say these scouts arrive . . . from which direction, most likely?”
“Could be anywhere, but the main force tracking your wreck will come from the North. If you’ve got truly bad luck, then we’ll have visitors from every direction,” Crowe said.
The decision clicked into place like tumblers in a lock.
“Do you have a spare rifle? Something with a lot of punch?” Nolan asked.
Crowe gave him a level look, then nodded. “What’s on your mind?”
“Any other weapons? Mines, grenades?” Nolan pressed.
“Yesss,” Crowe drawled. “A few. Why?”
Nolan angled his head, looking back toward the crash site. “The way I see it, there’s only one way to buy you a little time. I don’t know how well you can defend yourselves, but if I go to my site and make myself visible, they’ll come for me first. I can handle a few scouts, and if I can’t, well, it’s not your problem. I need more than just my sidearm and knife, though, because I plan on being out in the wilds for some time. I won’t lead the clock people—”
“People of the Clock,” he said.
“Whatever. They’ll chase me out into the moss, and frankly, I can use the exercise. I wouldn’t mind a map, either. I know what I saw on the way down, but some local flavor would help out a lot,” Nolan said.
Crowe was quiet for a long moment, then he gave Nolan a grudging shake of his head. “I can give you a map, and a rifle, and some other things. As to you offering yourself up, I don’t like it, and I can’t—”
“I’m not that noble. I plan on taking them away from here, killing a few, and finding out what I’ve fallen into. You’re holed up under a cliff, but I can’t do that. I was on the run before, but I won’t live on the run here, down a gravity well I might never leave.” Nolan inhaled, smelling the clean air. “I don’t plan on getting killed. Help me now, and I’ll help you later.”
“Consider it done,” Crowe said.
They shook hands, and in less than five minutes Nolan was walking out of the enclosure, a full pack strapped over his flight jacket. The rifle was top notch, and he had ammo, food, and supplies to last a long while, especially since the water supply was good all over the plain.
Nolan gave Crowe, Tilde, and his family a final wave, then stepped out into brilliant sunlight streaming across the mossy plain, a sky so big it seemed endless overhead. In his right thigh pocket was a magnesium torch that would burn anything, and he had just the place to use it. With light steps, Nolan began marching down the incline to the open plain, following the flatback trail over undulating ground peppered with gravel and small bits of torn moss, the gray-green spreading out nearly as big as the sky.
When crossing the plain with Crowe, he’d been bruised, tired, and uncertain. Now, with food and rest, he was a new man. Nolan began to trot, knees high and eyes up, watching for anything in the skies that might indicate visitors from the local warlords.
For hours, there was nothing. He stopped only to drink water and stretch, the light gravity easy on his muscles as the kilometers fell away. Soon, he passed the Pitch where they’d slept, listening to the deafening calls of the flatbacks. Nolan ran on, leaping over small streams, depressions, and generally staying true to the course that took him back to his starting point.
Then it was there, above him, gleaming in the last rays of the sun. The capsule—the stolen capsule, and a shattered wreck, but still, it was as much Nolan’s as anyone else’s. The wreckage had slipped a few more meters downslope and wedged against a pai
r of boulders that caught it fast. A fine patina of dust covered the bright metal, except where there were new gouges from the long, slow slide down the lower mountain. Already, the best technology people had to offer was becoming little more than scrap metal, and in time, it would be like there had never been a crash.
“The time to take advantage is now,” Nolan said.
“I agree. What’s the next step?” Cherry asked.
“Fire.” Nolan quickly stacked anything dry that would burn, and a few things that wouldn’t, building a pile a meter high and almost as wide.
“Cherry, open the hatch. Time to raid what we can, strip what we need, and get ready for our guests.”
“Opening now. No indication of visitors inside. The partial seal held,” she reported.
“Good. I’m going to use the fabric slings and impact cushions for the fire. Adding insulation, too,” he said, working as he talked. In five minutes, the burn pile was doubled in size. It was time to ring the dinner bell. Nolan struck a flare that Crowe had given him and shoved it deep into the pile’s core. It hissed like a serpent, catching the entire pile ablaze in seconds with a searing white light. Dark, noxious smoke began billowing up, then was whipped away on the breeze. If the scouts couldn’t see the fire, which was doubtful, they would certainly smell it.
“Bait’s in place,” he said.
“Just in time. Look northeast,” Cherry said after he finished scanning the horizon.
“Where are they—oh. Riding hard on those odd wheeled cycles. Crowe was right; they can really fly. Be here in what, twenty minutes?” Nolan asked.
“Fifteen. Time to get in a hide, dear. Do you plan on taking them at range?”
“Can’t. Need ’em close enough so they can’t break contact.” He considered the ground, picking a few points that looked like natural approaches. “I’ll let them come between that slide and ridge. Once they crest it, they’ll be tipped forward just enough to give me more exposed target. I’ll start there.”
“Ranging,” Cherry said as he stared down the shots. “Flashing ranges and optimal shooting points. Still only three targets.” Three numbers flickered in Nolan’s vision, and the only thing left to do was wait. Knowing and waiting were the enemies of patience, but he used the time by calculating additional paths and escape vectors in the event he ended up overwhelmed. Three on one was bad. A rifle would level the field, somewhat, but even then, these were unknown quantities. They could have weapons Cherry didn’t see, or abilities no one could imagine.
Lost Kingdom: Book 1 in the Lost Kingdom Series Page 5