The Far Dawn (20 page)

“Is that your nephew?” Mendes asks, looking at the man on crutches.

“I think so.” The story is that he was younger than me, but my time in cryo means he's much older now. Of course, he's not actually my nephew at all.

“That's got to be strange,” says Mendes.

“Yeah, but it's okay.” My heart rate rises. I'm still no good at lying. “I'm just glad I was able to find him.” Then I add something that is closer to the truth: “He might be the only family I have left.”

“General!” a soldier calls from the bridge. “We're getting urgent orders from command. We need to scramble for a code one crisis up north.”

“Sounds like we need to get a move on,” says Mendes. “Suddenly the world is falling apart. Here, let me walk you down.”

We make our way to the gangway and climb down the steep staircase. Soldiers kneel, rifles poised, at each side of the base.

I step onto the wobbling dock and find the man leaning on his crutches before me. A woman climbs down from the
Solara
and joins him. She wears jeans and boots and a similar coat.

“Pyra and Barnes did not die in vain,” the man says. This is the code we agreed upon when I contacted him yesterday over the gamma link.

“Nor did Tiernan,” I say.

The man nods. “It's good to finally meet you, Owen.”

Before now, Erik Robard had only been a voice over a phone, one I heard while the Nomad strike team was trying to pull me out of EdenWest. I was able to get word to him through Nomad chat spaces.

He'd been part of a group of refugees waiting to get to Desenna. On the night it was attacked, he was being picked up by a team from Heliad-7 in the
Solara
. Which is why Serena, the medic I met on board who'd known Dr. Maria, is with him now.

“Hi, Owen,” she says, looking me over for injuries, her eyes lingering on my wrist. “How are you holding up?” She glances at Mendes, and the anger and mistrust is palpable.

“I'm fine,” I say. I nod to Mendes. “If it wasn't for them, I'd be dead.” I have an urge to say more, to start gushing about all the events since Desenna. Of all people, Serena feels like someone I can truly trust, even though we only knew each other for a few hours . . . but now is not the time to get into it.

I turn to Mendes. “Thank you so much, for everything.”

He claps me on the shoulder. “Be in touch if you need anything and I'll see what I can do.” His eyes meet mine. “Good luck, soldier.” He looks at Serena and Robard, his face stern. “Keep him safe.”

They don't reply. Robard nods stiffly.

Mendes starts up the ladder but pauses. “Owen.”

“Yeah?”

“I know you've had a tough time,” he says. “You've probably lost your faith. Of course you have, after all you've been through. In times like these, faith comes and goes. It's your soul you need to keep track of.”

The statement rings cold inside me. I don't like the feeling, and I can't find a reply, so I just nod and turn back to Robard.

“Thanks for coming,” I say.

“Well, your message couldn't be ignored.”

A spray of gunshots sounds from somewhere in the Flotilla. Serena flinches, and I see the Nomads up on the
Solara
tensing.

“And,” Robard adds, “I think it's not a moment too soon.” He turns and motions to the
Solara
, and four of the Nomads sling their rifles over their shoulders and slide down the thick ropes that hold the ship to the dock. Robard looks back to me. “Ready?”

“Yeah.”

A horn sounds and engines roar. The ACF soldiers jump to the gangway and hurry up it as the ship starts to back out, rising from the water and retreating into the smoke. I see Mendes on the bridge. He salutes me, and I am glad for him but also feel a sense of regret, of guilt.

He would not salute me if he knew my true plan.

The Nomads, on the other hand, are eager to help.

We move as a unit up the dock. The Nomads keep their primitive rifles aimed, two in front and two behind.

Serena walks beside me. “Lilly and Leech . . . ,” she says after a moment.

“They're gone,” I answer, holding back a wave of sadness as I say it.

Serena seems to sense that I don't want to talk about it. “Owen, I'm so sorry.”

I shrug. “Thanks. The Three was only a myth anyway.”

Serena doesn't respond to this, and I don't want her to, so I change the subject. “You survived the Desenna attack.”

“We happened to be on our way to bring in more Nomad refugees. Just luck, really. As was being with Robard when he got the message from you.”

“How were you injured?” I ask Robard. The bandages on his leg look fresh, and he is not quite steady on his crutches.

“I was in a convoy that was attacked by an ACF assault force. We were just minding our own business, actually, en route for supplies after your attempted rescue from EdenWest. The ACF came out of nowhere one night and boxed us in a canyon. It was a slaughter. I only survived because they wanted to interrogate me. They thought we'd attacked some military installation.”

“I saw that,” I say, remembering the firefight we'd seen while flying from EdenWest to the Rockies. “We flew right by. I'm sorry we didn't help.”

“They had gunships,” says Robard. “There was nothing you could have done. Bastards took out families.”

It's hard to reconcile this with my time with the ACF soldiers. “They know it wasn't you, now,” I say, in case it helps. “Paul was behind that raid and the ACF knows it.”

“It would have been nice if they'd listened when
I
told them that.”

The light dims around us as we make our way into a tight alley. Doors and shrouded corridors split off at angles. Shadowy figures lean out here and there, looking first at our guns, then our clothes and possessions. Children and rats scurry across our path, sometimes hopping from one tin roof to another above us. At one point, two boys toss slimy projectiles at us that turn out to be gray-colored jellyfish. They splat, one on the pathway and one on Robard's coat. He flicks it away casually.

“We've kept what you learned about the Ascending Stars secret,” says Robard. “But given the strange events these last twenty-four hours around the globe, people will start to suspect something soon.”

“Do you have any word on when the selectees will begin to leave the Edens?” I ask.

“Our sources think it will be any day,” Serena says.

Which means this has to work.

We reach an intersection of dark, narrow alleys and ladders, some leading up and some down. Sour-smelling water drips down the brown-streaked walls. Smells compete to overwhelm us: cooking meat, rotting trash, and human waste.

Robard checks a small scrap of fabric on which he's drawn a little map. He points to a rusty metal ladder leading up to another level. “This way.”

There is a peal of chesty laughter from somewhere behind us. The thump of bass music starts up again, rattling the walls all around us. It's louder now, like we are getting closer to the Flotilla's heart. An old woman peers out a cracked window, her face gaunt, one eye swollen shut.

“Try to touch as little as you can in here,” says Serena, and I notice that she's wearing leather gloves.

We climb to the next level, where the smell of the burning water reaches us on the ocean breeze. Clothes flutter above. We pass through patches of hot, hazy sun. The thudding bass rattles our teeth, growing ever louder. Robard counts doors and stops in front of one that is hung with the bones of fish and who knows what else, strung on frayed rope. The skull of some kind of rodent stares out from the center of the door.

The music makes the door pulse.

Robard turns to me and leans on one crutch so he can put a hand on my shoulder. “You're sure you want to do this?”

“Yeah.”

“It's a good plan,” he says encouragingly. “I mean, it's crazy. And you know you don't have to . . .”

If only that were true. “I know. But what other option is there?”

“Okay, well, this is the best place for the job. And she knows we're coming.” Robard presses a button on the door.

The bass extinguishes inside. There is a click and a red light ignites and scans us.

Silence.

“She knows we're coming,” Robard repeats. He sounds nervous.

The door opens and a thin Asian man greets us with the glowing point of an electrically charged hand saber. His face is crisscrossed with scars and yet he is wearing plain green pants and a shirt like he works in a medical clinic.

“We—” Robard begins.

“Payment,” the man says quietly, the knife unmoving.

Serena holds out a small dirty canvas bag. The man quickly pulls it open and thumbs through the N-Fed credits inside, his lips clicking as he counts to himself. He stuffs his nose in and takes a big sniff of the money. He considers the scent, eyes closed, like he's tasting a fine wine. Then wags the knife at us. “Inside.”

We find ourselves in a cramped room bordered by cluttered shelves of jars and heaps of equipment. Green lights of charging batteries blink everywhere. There is a wide metal exam table in the center. It is covered in a thin white sheet that only mutes the stains beneath. A bank of computers stands at the far end. A medi-arm hovers over the table. These portable surgical machines are in many of the remote colonies and outposts, a sort of all-in-one basic surgeon. All it needs is one doctor to operate it. The air is still and stuffy, heavy with heat and laced with the scent of bleach.

“Welcome.” She stands beside the table, tall and thin, with tan skin and a shaved head. She wears bright blue rubber gloves and a black apron over a tank top and black pants. As she turns to us, I see that the side of her face is tattooed with a snake that starts behind her ear, curls around her chin, and then wraps around her neck like a collar. Her accent sounds like English is not her first language.

“You are Dr. Viram?” Robard asks.

“Indeed.” She turns back to a table of instruments: scalpels and other pointed and curved devices. “My credentials are on the wall if you need to see them.”

I find a series of diplomas hung there on the corrugated metal.

“You studied at Oxford on Helsinki Island,” says Serena, impressed.

“I graduated in three years, including residency. Your next question is why an accomplished doctor is working in a place such as this.”

“No,” said Serena. “I get it. These people aren't any less important than those in the Northern Federation or the Edens.”

Viram doesn't respond but she smiles lightly.

“How can you pay the bills?” Robard asks, noting the surgical machine, and glancing at his own leg. One of these might have let him keep his foot.

“Well,” says Viram, “you are not the only customers who will pay a premium for an anonymous treatment. And, believe me, I am giving you an extreme discount.”

When she finishes arranging her instruments, she looks at me. “You are the patient.”

I feel the old nerves: Owen, who didn't like having attention called to himself. But I press down on those fears because they do not matter anymore. The old me is of no use now. “Yes.”

She nods. “Three procedures, as I understand it.” Her tone is so even, like a teacher's. I have to keep myself from asking if that's okay. “Please hand the examples to my associate.”

I remove the Eden commander's finger from my pocket, the necklace with Victoria's finger bone from my neck, and hand both to the assistant. From the crowded shelves he yanks a device that looks like a microscope, plugs it into the central generator on the floor, and then sets it up on the exam table, as there is no room anywhere else.

Outside, the longest volley of gunshots yet.

Viram glances at the ceiling. “Things are beginning to deteriorate.” She gazes right at me. “Those of us who believed in the Three, in the teachings of Heliad-7, are starting to know in our hearts that the Three have failed. We wonder if there is still reason to hope.”

I have to look away. Her statement feels like a challenge, as if it is all up to me now. As if she suspects my true plan. I tell myself, as I have before, that she can't know, nobody really knows, what it is like for me right now. The only people who truly knew are gone.

The assistant looks at each bone under blue light. The magnified image appears on the computer screen.

Viram studies the bar codes.

“They look identical,” says Robard.

“Yes . . .” Viram leans in and her finger traces the vertical engraved lines on the screen. “Here is the difference. This spacing. If we make a change there . . . we should be fine. Save that data,” she says to the assistant. “Now, Owen, it is time to get on my table. Take off your clothes.”

I disrobe, clenching my teeth against nerves; and once the microscope is moved, I lie down on the sheet. The light of the medi-arm blinds me and I feel the fear of the underground Eden lab creep back into me, the fear that I am someone's lab rat all over again. I think of Anna's ribs being spread open. It is sweltering in the room. My back sticks to the sheet.

“We will start with the finger.” I feel a dull pain as Viram picks up my casted right hand. The fingers were purple and are now a sickly patchwork of yellow and brown. “Not the most elegant work on your wrist here,” she says. “Military. We'll fix that up, too, free of charge.”

The assistant attaches sensors to my chest. Serena takes my left hand. “We'll be right here.”

I nod and say, “Okay,” but it comes out a croak. I'm so scared, too scared. But I won't show it.

The assistant straps my shoulders and thighs to the table.

Viram leans over me, now wearing a surgical mask. She has lovely brown eyes. The medi-arm begins to whine to life, its lights brightening. The string of bulbs lighting the rest of the room flickers to brown.