At Galactic Central

by Kate MacLeod

  “I know it isn’t,” Scout said. “I’m so sorry. I wish you would have told me. We could have figured out a different way to earn money.”

  “It wasn’t so bad,” Daisy said. “Sammy was really kind. I think the manager was hoping I would bust open some heads, make a public lesson or something. Break some bones. But Sammy was showing me techniques he knows to subdue people without hurting them. I didn’t learn more than a fraction of what he knows, but it felt so much better. I was making the public house a more pleasant place for the majority of the customers by removing the troublemakers, and no one had to get hurt to do it.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Warrior,” Scout said.

  “You named her Warrior? After your marshal friend?” Daisy asked.

  “Yes,” Scout said.

  “She’s more than an AI to you,” Daisy said. “She’s like a mentor? Or family?”

  Scout chewed her lip while she thought. “I guess I thought she was when it was just the two of us. But it’s not the same as having a friend, a real friend. She’s been teaching me things while you’re working, school stuff, but when I really need someone, I guess that’s you.”

  “Well, me too,” Daisy said.

  “I’m not much good at this trust and friendship thing,” Scout said miserably. “I hope I didn’t botch it beyond repair. I’ve never had friends before I met all of you.”

  “Me neither,” Daisy said. “We’ll figure it out together, though. Right?”

  Scout gave Daisy a quick hug, then they turned to Warrior.

  “Did it work?” Scout asked.

  “See for yourself,” Emilie said. “My glasses aren’t as enhanced as yours.”

  Daisy and Scout looked all three of them over carefully, even having them turn around and lift their feet, but in the end, they agreed. Every nanite was now gone.

  “So, secret exit?” Scout said.

  “This way,” Daisy said.

  And once more Scout was following her friend further into the darkness.

  13

  Scout expected the tunnel to end in an opening under the bridge, but it just kept going on and on, and she realized they must be heading along the length of the bridge. The passage was narrow, more a forgotten gap between the massive stones than a purposely built corridor.

  That impression became stronger as the stones to either side started pressing in closer and closer around them. Once more Scout was walking sideways through a space too narrow for her hips and shoulders to pass through straight on.

  Then it ended altogether.

  “Now what?” Scout asked, her glasses showing her what details they could ascertain in the total darkness.

  “Up,” Daisy said and started to climb. Scout saw the irregularly spaced rungs of a ladder as soon as Daisy had climbed up out of view.

  “Can you make it up?” Scout asked Geeta and Seeta, who were effectively blind.

  “The ladder is just here,” Emilie said, guiding Geeta’s hand to it. She made slow progress up, having to grope for each new rung. Some of them were so far apart she had to hike one hip up to sit on the rung she had a hold of to reach it.

  “Seeta, can you do it?” Scout asked. “It’s okay if it’s too much. Daisy can carry you.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Seeta said.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” Emilie promised.

  Scout waited alone at the bottom of the ladder, looking back the way they’d come. Her glasses tried to focus on anything that might be lurking behind them, catching on one jutting edge of stone after another. The constant refocusing was giving her vertigo. It wasn’t like what she had felt while in the warp field, but it was similar enough to be distinctly unpleasant, and she looked away.

  Emilie was now far enough up the ladder for Scout to start her own ascent. She pushed her glider back out of her way and grasped the first rung. Even after the others had all touched it, the rust still crumbled under her hands, grinding into the creases of her palms.

  It was several meters to the top, and the space that Emilie and Daisy helped her pull up into was as dark as the space below.

  “Where are we?” Scout asked.

  “Nearly there,” Daisy said, crawling through an almost perfectly square passageway that was too small to stand up in.

  But then it took a sharp turn, and there was a pinkish glow at the end of this tunnel.

  Scout was never not happy to see the sky, even this one which never grew bright enough not to be drab despite the rosy tone.

  At the end of the tunnel Scout could hear the sounds of people laughing, talking, shouting, and just generally going about their day. They sounded very close, maybe a meter or two above them, but they were definitely emerging out of the side of the bridge nearly at the middle point between the two islands.

  Kids on gliders swooped and spun all around them. Some of them were Sparrow’s gang. Some were just normal kids.

  But a different sort of kid caught her eye, and after she spotted one, she saw others.

  “Shi Jian’s assassins,” Scout hissed to Daisy.

  “I see them,” Daisy said grimly.

  “Which means they aren’t even trying to hide,” Scout said.

  “We’re going to have to move fast,” Daisy said to all of them. “Drop down, catch some air, but stay as close to the underside of the bridge as you can. We’ll come out the other side, as close to the far island as possible. You’ll have to climb steeply. Then take the straightest shot to the port.”

  “That’s awfully fancy flying for newbies,” Emilie said.

  “You can handle it,” Scout assured her.

  “It’s going to be tricky,” Daisy said. Her tone was measured, but her eyes were telling Scout that the others hadn’t taken to flying as readily as Emilie had.

  “Trickier still if we’re outrunning . . . did you say Shi Jian’s assassins?” Emilie asked. She leaned closer to the opening to peer out at the kids in the sky, but she didn’t seem to know which ones to focus on.

  “We have to split up,” Daisy said after a long moment’s thought.

  “Three and two again?” Scout asked.

  “No,” Daisy said. “No. This time, I’m thinking one and four.”

  “One and four?”

  “You have to get them to the ship,” Daisy said, squeezing Scout’s arm.

  “We all have to get to the ship,” Scout said.

  “We will,” Daisy said firmly. “I’m just going to distract them a little while you four get clear.”

  “How many of them are out there?” Emilie asked.

  “Three,” Daisy said.

  “Just three?” Emilie asked.

  “Plus the guards from the Months’ compound,” Geeta said. “I see more than a dozen of those still out there looking for us.”

  “They won’t matter,” Daisy said. “If you fly the way I told you to, you’ll give them the slip. They’re relying on technology they don’t know we just rendered useless. You’ll be fine.”

  “And you?” Scout asked.

  “Like your friend said, there’s just three,” Daisy said with a forced grin.

  “We both know three is more than enough,” Scout said.

  “Look, I’ve been asking for word about kids like these since I got here,” Daisy said. “If they’d arrived before we left the public house just now, I would have heard. These three have more experience with gliders than they do. I’ll press that advantage,” Daisy said.

  “But what if they’re not alone?” Scout asked.

  “Then I really need to tackle these three,” Daisy said. “Because if she is here, I want to know.”

  “I don’t think she can be,” Emilie said.

  “What do you mean?” Scout asked.

  “Her messages with the Months. She can’t communicate with them through normal channels. Wherever she is, they don’t have a communications relay through warp space. That’s really isolated, which means—”

  “Really far away,” Daisy finished.r />
  “But who knows how fast that ship that picked her up is?” Scout said.

  “Time is short,” Daisy said, opening her glider and crawling up to the edge of the tunnel. “Shi Jian is here, or she isn’t. Either way, I’m going to distract those three and as many of the guards as I can. You three get to the ship.”

  “And we’ll see you there,” Geeta prompted her.

  “You’ll see me there,” Daisy promised, then tumbled backward out into the sky, positioning her glider on her back as she fell, then swooping out into the open sky beyond the reach of the gravity field.

  “Our turn,” Scout said. “Emilie, you go first. Then Geeta, then Seeta. I’ll bring up the rear.”

  “But we don’t know where we’re going,” Seeta pointed out.

  “Get across the bottom of the bridge and climb out beyond the other island. Not over it; stay out of its gravity field. Once we’re there, I’ll take the lead. Ready?”

  “As ever,” Emilie said, letting Scout help her position her glider as she leaned dangerously far out of the opening.

  Then she tumbled forward, rolled, and caught a breeze strong enough to carry her out of sight under the bridge.

  Geeta took a less acrobatic approach, launching herself straight out of the opening beyond the bridge’s gravity field and getting her wings under her before circling to fly under the bridge.

  “Can you copy Geeta’s move?” Scout asked Seeta. Seeta nodded, but her face had gone grayish pale, and her teeth were biting down on her lip hard enough to draw blood. “Go,” Scout prompted, and Seeta jumped out, spreading her wings wide.

  She wobbled, but not so much as to be truly precarious. She banked a wider turn than Geeta had, but in the end, she too passed out of sight under the bridge.

  Scout positioned her own glider but paused in the opening, her toes over the edge and her hands ready to push away from the sides. The lazy circles of glider traffic were all chaos now. Daisy was weaving and dodging around the three assassins, who were far better fliers than Daisy had been telling the others to expect.

  But not, Scout was certain, better fliers than Daisy had expected them to be. Daisy knew better than anyone not to underestimate the training and enhancements these kids had had.

  The other fliers had fled to other parts of the sky, not wanting to risk a crash with these four. Understandable.

  But the Months’ guards were missing too.

  Scout leaped out of the opening, twisting and catching a draft just below the edge of the bridge’s gravity field. It was a strong gust, shooting her across at a speed that would have felt scarily excessive before she had strapped a rocket around her waist.

  She shot out from under the bridge and changed her wings’ position to climb, up into the sky where her three friends were waiting, banking around in sloppy circles.

  Around them was a cloud of kids in black, but this time those kids had weapons. Mostly garbage being repurposed as projectiles, but the Months’ guards were keeping a respectful distance, a few bleeding freely from head wounds. Scout saw one try to draw close again. A bottle came tumbling out to meet him, hitting his skull with an audible crack.

  Sparrow’s kids were like street kids everywhere Scout had been. They had deadly aim and no use for warning shots.

  Scout rode a current up to a position just over the others and waggled her wings to get their attention. The three started to rise up out of their bubble of protectors, but the guards tried to close in around them.

  Scout rolled onto her back and soared awkwardly in the opposite direction.

  “Keep going straight on!” she yelled to the others as she passed over their heads. They gaped up at her, and she knew she must look insane. She was barely staying aloft; it was a lot harder to control her mass with the flimsy glider beneath her.

  But she had something she needed to do.

  When she was close enough, she rolled over again, pulling the gun from the holster at the base of her spine. Another item they had taken from Schneeheim, filled with darts, as the assassins had been told to take Scout alive.

  She had stopped gliding and started falling as soon as she retracted her wings to reach for her gun, but she had planned for that. She had enough altitude compared to the others. She took aim and fired, over and over until she was out of darts.

  A cheer rose up from the kids around her, and a few of the more eager converged on the few guards that remained after Scout had run out of shots.

  “Thanks!” Scout yelled although she doubted more than a few of the closest could hear her. “And tell Sparrow thanks as well!”

  By then she had stowed her gun and was climbing back up into the sky, making for the distant dots that were her friends.

  The rest of the trip to the port was no more challenging than the usual flight through the irregular winds and twisting cloud formations that always marked the atmosphere at the edge of the sphere. Scout landed first, then turned to catch the next if they needed help.

  Emilie touched down, shutting her wings at once as Scout had, then turned on the opposite side of the jutting rock, reaching out just as Scout was. Geeta stumbled a bit but kept moving forward, getting out of the way before Seeta came down.

  Somewhere in the last few minutes, Seeta had gotten the hang of flying. She landed with graceful ease on one tiptoe, folding her wings and bringing the other foot down in a motion that rolled seamlessly into a walk into the port building.

  “Where’s Daisy?” Emilie asked, scanning the skies with her augmented glasses. They were largely designed for interfacing with computer systems, though, and didn’t have the vision adjustment features that Scout had.

  “I don’t see her,” Scout said. “But she’ll be here. I’m going to take you three to the ship so you can tell the captain to get ready to go.”

  “But Daisy,” Emilie persisted.

  “She’ll be here,” Scout assured her. “She’s tougher than she looks.”

  Geeta let out a bark of a laugh that almost seemed to take herself by surprise. “Sorry,” she said, “but have you seen Daisy? Daisy looks like she eats hulking mercenaries for breakfast. Those three little kids don’t stand a chance.”

  “Those three little kids are like Shi Jian,” Scout explained as she hurried them across the waiting room to the maze of corridors beyond. “Augmented in every possible way, nearly unkillable, and highly trained in the art of killing.”

  “But so was she,” Emilie said. “Right?”

  “She was trained," Scout allowed. "But she never took an assignment. She chose a different path. Killing, that’s not her way."

  “But it could be,” Emilie said. “The moment she chooses to be.”

  “Stop it, Emilie,” Geeta said. “She’s on our side.”

  Scout stopped outside the airlock to Jocquette Dieu-le-Veut’s ship. Either the dogs had never stopped barking, or they sensed her presence on the other side of the door.

  “They’re going to go nuts if they see me and I just leave again,” Scout said.

  “Leave?” Seeta said.

  “I have to get Daisy,” Scout said. “As soon as I’m out of sight, get inside. Don’t let the dogs slip past you! And tell Jocquette to get ready, because when we get here, we’re going to be . . . is there a word that means more than hurry?”

  “We’ll convey the sense of it to her,” Emilie promised. “Go get your friend.”

  Scout ran back down the corridor and was unfurling her glider as she crossed the waiting room, preparing to launch into the air before even getting out the doors, when she saw it wasn’t necessary.

  Daisy was limping her way across the waiting area, dragging the shattered remains of her glider behind her.

  “Daisy!” Scout cried.

  Daisy looked up, and Scout saw an ugly gash across her forehead, a gash so deep that even through the flood of wrongly colored blood, Scout could see the dull shine of her skull.

  Not bone.

  “I’m okay,” Daisy said, her words slurring tog
ether.

  “Are they behind you?” Scout asked, catching hold of Daisy before she could fall to the ground and looking over her shoulder for signs of pursuit.

  “No, not yet,” Daisy said. “They fell back, but they must have come here on a ship.”

  “Then let’s get to our ship and get out of here,” Scout said.

  Scout slipped an arm around Daisy’s waist. Augmented bodies were heavy, and the weight of her made Scout stagger, but she forced her legs to straighten, to support her friend.

  Five days to Amatheon. More than enough time for Daisy to heal.

  If they could just get to the ship. The distance seemed to have increased exponentially since the last time she had traversed it, and her vision was starting to fade into a cascade of black explosions from the effort of supporting Daisy’s weight before they reached the last branching corridor.

  Then her knees did buckle underneath her, and she stumbled, Daisy’s full weight collapsing on top of her. She was hurt badly, worse than she had let on, and Scout was trapped underneath her.

  Then she heard a familiar metallic clanging and looked up to see Captain Jocquette Dieu-le-Veut clomping down the sloping hallway to them. She grasped the back of Daisy’s jacket in her metallic hand, then straightened with an odd sort of shuffle.

  It must be awkward, having superstrength on mismatched sides of your body.

  It must be murder on the back.

  But she was managing, throwing Daisy’s heavy frame over her shoulders and calling back over her shoulder to Scout.

  “Get up off the floor! We have a launch window, and I’m not going to miss it!”

  Somehow Scout got her arms underneath her and blinked the fuzziness out of the edges of her vision. She stumbled up the ramp and through the airlock.

  Someone shut the door behind her, and she let herself collapse to the floor.

  Where she was immediately tackled by two very ecstatic dogs who quickly bowled her over. When they had communicated the worst of their worry and the best of their excitement at seeing her return, she managed to sit up and hug them tight.

  Then she felt the ship detach from the airlock and she hugged them even tighter.