Skyland (15 page)

"They know more than you think."

"I..."
do they?
"I doubt it."
If
they knew any more I'd be dead.

"They knew who you were. They knew where you
were, even though I'm guessing you, like the rest of the country
folk, didn't exactly have advance tickets."

"No..." Harper squinted. His brow tensed. He
flinched from the possibility.
How did they know so quickly? How
did they know to check that ship?
"So what do they know?"

"I don't know."

"Tell me." Harper sat up, his hammock
swinging wildly. He clutched hard at its edge as he leaned forward.
"
What do they know?
"

Somebody shifted in the next hammock over.
The guard still sitting by the door turned his head and looked
cautiously at his charges chatting in the dark.

Harper lowered his voice. "What do they
know?"

"I don't know. Look, they're not telling me
that kind of thing. But, look I worked in the service before. I
know how they work. And I just know... they found you for a reason.
They know you. And if they know you're not a threat, then they have
the information to make that judgment. I don't know how... I just
know this can't be the first time you've met them. They already
knew you."

"What the hell does that–"

"Look I've got to get back." He got up, the
chair-bag swung against it's hooks.

"Ben. Ben!"

But he was already at the door. A second
later it had clicked shut behind him.

What do they know? What do they know!

He glared after the shut door. But it didn't
open again, and Harper lay back in the hammock, arms crossed, eyes
squinting angrily at the ceiling.

What do they know!

Harper curled up against the plastic links.
He squeezed his eyes shut. His tense joints shifted against the
chains of the bed, and he tried to get comfortable.

But it wasn't the chains of the hanging
contraption that were keeping him awake.

Harper couldn't possibly believe he could
sleep. But a few hours later, he woke up. The lights had been
turned back up, and the other passengers were milling about,
folding up blankets, and making chairs out of their beds.

Harper looked out the window.

This time, he did not look at the infinite,
extending space on the other side of the glass.

He looked at the brown shell of a
planet.

Chapter
Seventeen

in which there is
Sky!

Harper took one step and the ground lurched
under him. He took one breath and his teeth ground against the air,
thick with dust and heat. The heat burned against his skin. He
looked up, and tears spilled over his cheeks.

Sky... blue Sky.

He closed his eyes against the blazing sun,
but the brightness stabbed through his lids. It was the most
welcome pain he'd ever felt. His mouth stretched into a wide smile.
He could taste the salt of his tears as they ran over his lips. He
laughed and opened his eyes and stared, eyes watering and burning,
into the Sky. He laughed again, smiling broadly at its crystal
blue. Only a couple days had passed since he last stood on Skyland
but... but that was another life.

His body clock had hit zero and started,
very slowly, to count back up again.

I am alive and under the Sky again!

Then the laughter choked.

His smile tensed and twisted into a grimace,
his eyes squeezed shut against different tears. His throat clenched
against a sob.

I am so sorry... My lady... I am sorry. You
are more beautiful from the ground.

The wave of guilt felt like it would drown
him. 

I am so sorry.

But even as he prayed apologies and begged
forgiveness, a second wave of guilt choked him. He would betray Her
yet again. He would fly through Her blue fields yet again. He would
defy scripture and Sky Reverend-law yet again. He would throw away
all supplication to Her because another lady's face was sharper in
his mind, and the pain in his heart was sharper than his guilt.

Zara.

He looked down from the Sky. The tears were
drying. The laughter was gone. The Sky faded into the periphery,
grey and unimportant for now. 

Zara.

He looked around the docks where the Union
ship had landed. The excitement and the babbling crowd were gone.
Harper watched the docks slowly filling with people once more. But
this time, it was different. Union soldiers replaced excited
travelers. Weapons, not binoculars, hung off their shoulders. And
drab brown replaced excited blue in the threads of the crowd.

And it was quiet.

No one spoke to Harper. The civilians from
the Union ship wrote or read from notebooks as they walked, or
talked softly to the soldiers, who answered with curt directions
and gestures or whispered into hidden communications devices.
Others worked in silence, carrying, sorting or counting boxes and
sacks being unloaded from the ship. Still others were standing
around idly, politely ignoring Harper as he stood with tears stilly
drying on his cheeks.

He ignored them back.

Instead, he looked back at the ship that he
had only seen from the inside. He'd been shuttled onto the Union
ship without even a window to look out of. Now he could see the
black needle that he had been riding in.

It was a weapon.

Sharp, like a bayonet – a bayonet on the end
of a very long rifle – it was shiny and smooth, like the rooms
inside it. Long and thin, like the uniform corridors, it reached
high up, nearly piercing the Sky even as it rested on the dock.

And it was not alone.

Harper looked at the line of needle ships,
then back at the one he had just come off of. He felt sick.

It IS a weapon.

A weapon on his own soil. A weapon he had
ridden back home.

Abomination.... abomination. I should not be
here.

Something hateful began to uncoil from the
pit of his stomach. The violent defensiveness reared–

No!

He flinched away from the ugly thing rooted
deep in his mind.

No... I came to help. We came to help...

He closed his eyes. Zara's face was still
there, clear and calming.

Help her, if nothing else...

He turned his back on the needle of a ship,
opened his eyes, and took a calming breath.

The air smelled like charcoal.

The scent was barely there, and there was no
breeze to carry it on. Harper sniffed again. It was definitely
there, a faint burning smell floating on the still air. He walked a
few paces down the side of the docks. On the launch pad, just
beyond the Union's ship was another Skyland ship.

Jet black streaks framed a gaping fissure in
its side.

The gleaming white giant-bone of a ship
stuck in the sand was cracked as if it had been struck by
lightening. Tiny threads of smoke still curled around the
edges of the wound.

The fires are still burning. 

Harper felt tears well up in his eyes again.
But this time they did not fall. A part of him wanted to let them
go, wanted to cry like a little boy. The part of him that had
looked up from the barren countryside, looked up onto the distant
ships and felt awe for the enemies even as he prepared to destroy
them, that part wanted to cry at the destruction of such a
beautiful thing.

Magnificent abominations.

Even now, the ship still stood. Ladders
stood at its sides and men went up and down these, drawing
hoses–hoses, Harper could only assume, bringing precious water to
quell the fires. Other men carried pieces from inside, perhaps
salvaging the preserved bits, perhaps clearing out the
debris. 

Magnificent abominations... And not defeated
yet!

But Harper's stomach turned at the thought
of the ship that didn't survive.

This is the lucky one.

He looked further down the docks for the
others. Beyond the cracked ship, beyond the needle ships, the vast
cylinders of the other Skyland ships sat ready on their launch
pads. Smoke curled between them, too.

Men with guns paced in the smoke. 

Some wore the dirt-colored clothes of the
Union army and squinted in the sun or sauntered back and fourth
looking bored. Others wore slick, black uniforms with blue bands
around the neck.

Skyland's defense units. 

Skyland's army rarely saw action. But,
apparently, they were ready for it. Ready at the side of the
Union.

Not much of a war, then.

Harper stared at the soldiers of Skyland,
standing beside the Union troops. He did not know much about the
defense units of his planet. The country folk had little to do with
the bureaucracy of government outside the fields and villages. Sky
Reverends were their enforcers, and isolation kept the
peace. 

Now, he watched the blue-banded soldiers
pacing up and down and up and down along the docks beside the
still-smoking ships, beside the foreign soldiers in brown. The
Skylanders did not squint in the sun. They looked around with keen
eyes accustomed to the sharp light. One or two chatted with the
Union troops. Someone laughed.

So who is fighting?

"That's the third, I think?" 

Harper jumped.

He blinked at the person talking to him. It
was the skinny guard from the common room of the Union ship. He was
standing beside Harper staring wide-eyed at the nearest blackened
ship with the giant fissure. Harper didn't say anything, and the
young soldier kept babbling.

"The second one fell... everywhere when it
exploded. I think they're still looking for debris. This one was
the closest, probably right under the explosion."

Harper ignored him. He shook his head and
turned away from the smoke and the Skyland defense units and the
Union troops. He didn't care. He was here to do one job. He'd let
everyone else worry about theirs. His eyes followed his guard's
curious stare, back towards the burned wreck of the third ship.

It would have been empty. This one, at
least.... would have been empty.

The guard was still talking. 

"The others aren't so damaged," he said.
"They're hoping to repair them."

"Repair them?"

The soldier looked at Harper and laughed, a
short, surprised laugh. "Of course they're going to repair
them."

"But... is it safe?"

"Well, it'll have to be. They can't let the
whole project go to waste. Let billions of... what currency do you
use here?

"Suns."

"Let billions of Suns go up in smoke? I
don't think so. Besides, making it safe is our job. No one'll be
able to get a bomb inside these things again." He smiled at Harper
and punched him on the shoulder. "Not with us around, right?"

Harper cringed. He tried not to grimace. He
ground his teeth together and tried to clamp down on the voice
floating in his own mind. His own voice, echoing his father, his
own voice in the trenches of muck, explaining it all to Zara:
"If the people still live they will build more ships. They must
be full."
A fresh attempt to launch the ships would only draw
fresh attempts from the Sky Reverends. From his father. Unless
someone stopped them.

"Well, base is this way," said the soldier.
"I need to get out of this sun! But I guess you're probably used to
it, huh?"

"Hm."

The over-friendly soldier reminded Harper of
the faux politeness of the angry man – smiling, chatting about
their "guest's" comfort. Harper studied the young soldier's face.
Open and curious, his smile didn't seem forced. Maybe he just
didn't know how to talk to his charge.

Harper did not know either.

Prisoner or guest? What am I?

The young guard had walked a few paces away
and was paused, waiting, and looking around at the landscape
outside the docks. His eyes were big and his smile wide on his thin
face as he looked around at the Sky, at the horizon, at the
expanses of sand extending forever beyond the bridge out of the
city. 

"Where is it? The base?" asked Harper,
starting to follow.

"Just a mile over... over... over, ah, this
way."

He waved his hand absently in the direction
of the bridge where a handful of civilians and two soldiers were
already headed away from the docks. He looked far more distracted
by his surroundings than by where they were supposed to be going.
His head twisted this way and that, eyes swooping over the wide
horizon of the Skyland countryside. But he started walking again,
still looking around, and Harper walked with him.

Harper wondered where Ben was. He squinted
at the group ahead of him, but the soldiers there were both female.
He hadn't seen Ben since he'd left the previous night, telling
Harper that the Union troops knew something... something... else,
something he wouldn't say.

Just do your job.

Harper tried to put Ben's words out of his
mind.

How could he know anything? He's been with
them less than a day. How could he–

"Damn it
is
a fire here." The young
soldier's voice cut into Harper's thoughts. 

"You get used to it." 

"Damn, though. It is hot."

Harper stared at the smiling, wide-eyed
young man next to him.

"It's your first time here?"

"Yeah. Been stationed a few planets over
since training, a place a lot like Union Proper. Nothing like
this.... Hey, where are all the people? I thought Skyland was
overcrowded."

"Just the city. And... I don't know where
they all are."

Harper had been wondering just that. Skyland
itself wasn't actually overcrowded at all. In fact, it had
seemingly endless masses of land for the population to expand into.
But it was all countryside, just sand and scavengers and kale. In a
hundred years of drought, the people had squeezed into the city,
where the resources of the few wealthy Skylanders were
concentrated. The city was full and the country was barren – that's
why the ships had been built in the first place: everyone wanted to
leave.