by C. Gockel
Covering her mouth, she yawned. Last night she’d laughed when he’d gone off in lecture mode and had said, “Now you sound like a history professor,” because he had, and maybe there was a part of her that still found that impossible. He’d reached her at speeds that would have been difficult for Fleet tech, and he’d killed her captors by himself—a lot for a history professor. When she’d made the joke, he’d turned to her and said, “Do I? I feel less and less like that person,” and then gazed around the house as though he expected to see ghosts.
She shook herself. They both had ghosts. A normal person had to be even more rattled than she was by this situation. And she was rattled. It was worse than the Asteroid War in System 6. She rubbed her eyes again. The best way to handle things like Six was not to think about them … to focus on the immediate present.
She looked around the room. There were some clothes laid out for her, and no less than four jars of peanut butter on top of the trunk, all scraped clean. There were several boxes of opened soy milk that she didn’t have to lift to know were drained, and empty soup packets. It was as though James had been the one who’d been in a work camp for weeks. He ate as much as several men his size.
Thinking about food, her stomach growled. Through the window she saw that snow still fell, but James was out shoveling. She could see the top of his blonde head among the drifts. She frowned and stood up. She’d been coddling herself long enough.
Pulling on the clothes laid out for her, she found her nose wrinkling up at the mess on the ottoman. By Fleet training, and an upbringing that had featured an explosion of rats among the native species, she did not like to leave a mess. After folding the duvet, she took James’s trash to the kitchen, found the household incinerator-crusher beneath the sink, and dumped in the garbage. As she lifted her head and looked out the kitchen window, she was hit by a bolt of sunlight through the clouds. Her jaw tightened in the cheerful light. The snow was slowing; but, with James’s earlier ruse, they probably had a few hours before company arrived. Just the same … she opened a soup packet and drained it swiftly, not even bothering to heat it up.
A few minutes later she strode into the living room just as James came in the front door. He was wearing a sweater rolled up at the sleeves. Covering his arms were tattoos. They looked like a twisting pattern of ivy and shimmered slightly in the sunlight that streamed in the door behind him.
She blinked. “Where did those come from?”
Following her gaze, he said, “We have to—” He stopped talking and drew his arms toward his face. “What are these?” he whispered.
Through the open door came the distant whir of engines. With a thought, Noa prompted her Fleet apps to identify the sound. It was a low altitude old-fashioned Luddeccean hover-carrier, the type that had been used in her youth to obliterate pirates that had terrorized southern sea lanes. She didn’t remember one ever being used since then. They were huge and expensive. Her app placed it at twenty kilometers away—approaching at a speed of sixty kilometers an hour. It could go much faster—which meant they were using sensors. They were searching for someone. Her eyes went to James, still staring down at his tattoos. Or two someones.
“I don’t remember how I got these.” James stared at the dark marks on his arms, the world around him forgotten.
“James? Are you in pain?” Noa’s hand landed on his forearm.
James’s head jerked up. She was looking him directly in the eye. He heard the ship outside, and he realized how he must look. He’d rushed in to rouse her, and now he was staring at himself like an idiot … but he didn’t remember how he got the tattoos. His eyes skimmed the house that he knew every inch of but felt like a set piece, and he blinked. Noa had folded the duvet and cleaned the ottoman. Those details seemed more memorable than the room itself.
“We have to leave, James.”
The ship was getting closer. He met her eyes. They were no longer bloodshot. Her hand on his forearm was firm.
“Yes,” he said, rolling down his sleeves, as though covering the mystery could make it go away. “This way,” he said, pulling away from her grip. She followed without a word. The lights flickered on as they entered the garage and he heard Noa breathe. “An LX 469.” Voice a reverent-sounding whisper, she added, “Older model, but nice, very nice.”
James had a hazy memory of saying nearly the same thing when his father got the vehicle. He’d been about fourteen, too young to drive on Earth, but in the ‘wilds’ of Luddeccea his father had let him. The craft was shaped like a teardrop. It was half as wide as James was tall, one and a half times as long. Even perched on its retractable wheels, it only came up to his mid-thigh. The top was glass reinforced with black steel supports at regular intervals, the front was rounded, the rear tapered to a single, large engine. The curve of antigrav engines peeked out from below. He tapped the button for the doors and there was a click—not a whoosh—and the sides lifted like wings. There wasn’t a vacuum-tight seal; the LX was for near ground transport only, but it was small enough to slip through the trees.
He slipped into the seat and grabbed the wheel, and felt the now-familiar sense of wrong. Whenever he gripped the wheel before, he’d always felt a rush of nostalgia. Now … he only remembered the rush. He felt as though he was watching a holo of his life and not really living it. Sunlight spilled into the garage as the door lifted, and Noa slipped into the seat beside him. In the distance, he heard the approaching roar of the hover-carrier engines … that was real.
He hit the ignition. The antigrav engines whined, the craft lifted, and he retracted the wheels. They shot forward. In the periphery of his vision he saw Noa look back over her shoulder. “That carrier carries hundreds of troops, and smaller craft. Did they send it out just for us?”
James tilted his head. “There are a few other homes in this region.”
“It’s still crazy!” Noa protested. “The resources they’re expending ... ” She turned back around in her seat. “Why are you driving so slow?”
“I’m driving as fast as I can in these trees,” he replied, swerving the vehicle over a large, protruding root system. His jaw wanted to frown, and instead just shifted from side to side.
“You’re following the manufacturer’s guidelines, aren’t you?”
James angled the craft around a trunk and the centrifugal force pressed Noa into the door. He hoped it would make her be quiet so he could concentrate.
Being slammed into the door didn’t deter her. “You are going too slow.”
James didn’t speed up. He looked through the rear view cameras. Tree branches blocked the sky and the giant hover-carrier was almost completely invisible, but he could still hear it.
“Display topographical map,” Noa growled, and a three-dimensional holo of the Luddeccean terrain appeared on the dash. The mountains appeared and the Xinshii Gorge. “We can’t go this way,” Noa said. “If we approach the gorge at this angle, it will be too wide and deep for us to cross.”
She was right, and James adjusted their course. She looked through the glass roof. “Can you go faster?”
“No,” James said. The accelerator buttons were flush with the steering bar.
“You should let me drive,” Noa said, her voice tight. “I’m a pilot.” She tapped the dash meaningfully. The LX didn’t have a cable outlet for neural interface control, but the steering bars were on a track that allowed it to be oriented in front of either passenger.
“I can’t go faster,” he said. His eyes went to the rear view screen. There were still too many trees to see the hover-carrier, but it sounded louder.
Noa rubbed her face. “I know this thing goes faster!”
“No, it doesn’t! Especially not on this terrain—”
Over the sound of the craft’s own engines, James heard more antigravs. Noa looked out the window and said, “There are antigrav bikes on either side of us. Go faster!”
“I’m barring it,” James said, his fingers tightening uselessly on the steering bar and t
he acceleration control buttons.
“Give me the wheel!” Noa shouted.
James tried to plot the odds, the likelihood that his superior state of health and more likely faster reflexes would be an advantage over her experience.
“I am a pilot in the Galactic Fleet, James! Give me the goddamn wheel.”
Before he could respond, she leaned across him, grabbed his hands, pulled back, and hurtled them upward. Luddeccean Green filled his vision. They were aimed at the belly of a hovering cruiser.
Gritting her teeth, Noa aimed the LX upward toward the Luddeccean craft hovering above the trees. It wasn’t the carrier; rather a smaller, more maneuverable beast they’d sent out to drop charges and troops.
“What are you—” A nerve-searing crash from below cut James off.
Noa immediately pushed the bars, and the craft lunged down. She could feel the heat of plasma fire through the floor.
“That tree would have fallen right in front of us,” James said. “How did you know?”
Eyes ahead, Noa gritted out, “It’s what I would have done.” The towering pine would have taken out a horizontal swerve—less need for a direct hit. She squeezed the accelerator. “Why isn’t this thing going faster?” Noa hissed, angling the ship to the left so fast, James’s shoulder slammed against the side door.
“I told you, it can’t go faster,” James said as Noa careened the vehicle toward a tree wider than their vessel. In the rear view screen she saw a bike directly behind them. Her apps went to work piecing together the make and model as Noa jerked the hover up sharply so they were rising nearly straight vertical. Gunfire erupted below, and Noa swung the ship to the side, colliding with a web of branches. They were buffeted by tree limbs, and the craft bumped like a wheeled vehicle on rocky ground.
In the calmest voice she could manage, Noa said, “James, did you not disengage the turbo dampener when you got this thing?”
“That goes against the manufacturer’s recommendations,” James said. “It’s technically my father’s and—”
“They only make that recommendation so they can legally sell them to civilians,” Noa said.
“I actually told my father that,” James said, his voice sounding strangely far away.
“Next family gathering, bring it up again,” Noa said, swerving hard just before they collided into the upper trunk of a tree, and then disengaging the antigrav. They free-fell for a few breathless nanoseconds as two bikes soared over their heads and past them. Restarting the antigrav, she banked hard right. Her hands were slick with sweat, and she felt at any moment the bars would slip from the three fingers of her left hand.
A tree exploded in a shower of needles, splinters, and flame to the left. Noa swung the craft hard as another tree exploded behind them. She heard another sound behind them—a whining noise that was louder than that of their antigrav engines.
“What is that?” James said, evidently hearing it, too.
“More bikes,” Noa said, glancing in the rear view port. “They’ve got forward-mounted guns.”
“We can’t outrun them,” James said.
“Nope,” said Noa, jerking the craft hard left. Another tree exploded in what would have been their trajectory. A soft voice piped the make and model of the bikes into her mind. “The bikes are older tech,” she said, reviewing the data. “They can only shoot forward—the cannons pack such a mean punch they need the forward momentum to negate the recoil. If you see one and you think I don’t see it, please scream.”
She saw James swivel in his seat. “I think I can do better,” he said, bending into the back where the gear was. A moment later he reappeared with his hunting rifle.
Eyes still ahead, Noa said tightly, “Those guys are in armor. You’re not going to hit the sweet spot between their face plates and chest armor at our speed.”
“At least I will annoy them,” James said.
And he had a point. “Annoy away,” Noa gritted out, swinging them hard right. In her mind she was playing a map of their path. They were headed to the gorge. Lizzar balls.
James touched a button and a skylight rolled back. A moment later, James was standing half in and half out of the cab. In the periphery of her vision Noa saw a black blur fall from the sky and then a flare of flame. “They’re dropping charges!” Noa shouted. “ … trying to keep us in a straight line.”
A vehicle in the view screen was sliding into the path behind them. Noa waited for the moment it would be almost directly behind them to swerve. James’s rifle cracked, and the moment never came. The driver went flying backward off his bike. Noa gaped, but she managed to raise their vehicle and hit the brakes in time for the riderless bike to careen below them and crash into a tree. She gunned the engine, heard two more cracks of James’s rifle, one left, one right, and saw two more bikes go down.
“Nice shots, James,” she whispered.
Slipping into the cab, he shook his head. “I can’t believe I hit them. I’m not that good … ”
Noa blinked. “This is no time for self-doubt!” She almost told him to keep firing, but dark spheres falling from the sky made her breath catch. Each was about as wide as her arm was long, and they had flattened undersides with antigrav engines. Each had a seam around the center, like an equator. Cannons protruded from the equator, and Noa knew from experience they could fire in any direction. “Lizzar dung! Drones!”
James was up and out of the skylight before she could stop him. “Aim for the glass eyes!” She shouted. It wouldn’t destroy the drone, but it would slow it down. She cursed. The eyes were only two centis and at this distance and speed ...
James’s rifle cracked and a drone went spinning. He’d hit it … Noa’s jaw dropped.
His rifle cracked again and another drone slowed as it tried to reorient itself. The first drone was already back on their tail. James’s rifle cracked as the cruiser above dropped more drones. She heard bullets whizzing overhead, and a charge exploding to their left. Noa did another hard turn, dropped nearly to the ground, and they flew beneath a tree in the process of toppling—trapping two drones at the same time. The sunlight overhead disappeared. Noa didn’t have to look up … she knew the main cruiser was up there. James’s rifle cracked again and another drone spun out of their path only to reorient itself a moment later.
Noa took a deep breath. The jig was up. She thought of Kenji and of Ashley and the fact that she’d never be able to help them. They’d yank out her port … and James, what they would do to him … he had some crazy tech in him to be such an excellent shot.
Her jaw hardened. Filling her voice with every ounce of command she could muster, Noa shouted, “James, get down and close the hatch!”
James dropped into the vehicle and obeyed. “Safety harness,” Noa said. He clicked it on, and God bless him for not arguing. Ahead she saw a clearing in the trees.
“Noa, no!” James said, “We can’t fly over the Xinshii gorge—”
Noa swung the craft along the edge of the gorge—a drone swept by them over the brink. The bottom of the gorge was 1,200 meters plus. Over the engines of the cruiser and the carrier she could hear the furious wail of the drone’s antigrav and propeller as it tried, impossibly, to adjust to the sudden disappearance of the ground.
And then the wail disappeared. She peeked into her rear view and saw the sky where the drone had been was now empty.
She heard James exhale. “I thought you were going to fly over the—”
Gripping the steering bars harder, Noa chanted, “Hail Mary, full of grace,” not because she believed, but to give herself strength, to calm her heart that was beating so fast she felt her rib cage sting. Before she could lose her nerve, she swung the craft directly over the lip of the gorge, hit the brakes and cut the engine. For less than a heartbeat that seemed to last an eternity, they hovered without antigrav or engine.
And then they plunged.
James couldn’t breathe, the water at the bottom of the Xinshii gorge was coming toward them too fast. T
he gorge was nearly as deep as Earth’s Grand Canyon, and his neural interface began randomly calculating the strength and processing power needed for an antigrav engine to keep them aloft above the drop—more than the LX had, and Noa had cut the engines anyway.
Back pressed into the seat by the acceleration, James saw a light streak in the sky. A shooting star? An optical illusion? His malfunctioning brain and data port concocting a metaphor for his short life and flashing it through his visual cortex? He glanced down and all he saw was black water coming toward them faster and faster.
James had no words. But even if he had, they would have been cut off by Noa’s own utterance—a cry, a snarl, a scream of rage—it seemed to James to be all of those. Just before the craft hit the water, she pulled up on the rudder and engaged the antigrav engines, but it would never work—the engines would have to overcome the force of their fall and—
They hit the water with a resounding thwack before James could finish the thought. His vision splintered like shards of ice—another optical illusion? The last thing he would see before he died? The world went dark, and his head ricocheted against the seat. It took a moment to realize he was still alive, and that the impact had not been as much as he expected—the crack in his vision was an actual crack in the windshield, and water was oozing through the cracks in the skylight and the doors. Noa engaged the forward engine … he blinked … they were moving forward and up. A moment later they surged up out of the river, and instead of black he was surrounded by green … but not Luddeccean Green, the deeper green of the ivy that clung to the limestone walls of the gorge. The world that had been bright and sunny moments before was now bathed in shadow. James looked up, and saw the hulking shape of the hover-carrier just before Noa gunned the engine. An instant later, he was blinking in sunlight, and once again he thought he saw a shooting star.