“The eggs the Guardians hatched from?”
“Yes. There’s a neat storage facility in the belly of this ship. Thank goodness Aries and Striker kept the eggs intact and carried them out to the meadow to hatch. I guess they felt obligated because they used their ship. Besides coming to Refuge, it was the best decision they could have made.”
It sounded like a bedtime fairy tale. Haven 6 had such rich history, and Eri felt like she’d only seen the tip of the iceberg. She wanted to ask more questions, but Striver took her hand.
“Come on, we should get outside to meet him.”
As they rode the platform to the fresh air, Eri titled her face up to the sky, shielding golden rays with her hand. A winged creature spiraled down in elegant circles. His feathers shone with pearly iridescence in the morning sun.
He landed swiftly, turning from a glide into a jog on spindly legs. Eri froze, blinking hard, as if she’d imagined it. He jumped to the top of the hull in one leap.
The birdman had long, branchlike fingers and slender arms. Gray eyes with no pupils stared back at her. A beak-like mouth trilled a shrill note on the wind. He reminded her of an angel from another world.
“I see your ward has awoken,” Phoenix announced in a more manly voice than Eri expected, making her gawk even more.
The birdman talks?
“Yes, and she speaks English, Phoenix. She’s from a colony ship, departed from Old Earth five hundred years ago.”
Phoenix bowed and his feathered back ruffled in the breeze. “A pleasure to meet you.”
Striver nudged Eri’s arm and nodded encouragingly toward Phoenix. She quirked an eyebrow.
You mean you want me to talk to it?
His face grew sterner, the wrinkles around his eyes saying:
You were the one who wanted our help.
Phoenix waited, his blank gaze unnerving her. Did he feel the same emotions as humans? Could he sympathize? Eri took a deep breath and offered her hand. “Eridani Smith. Call me Eri.”
His clawed fingers wrapped around hers, and she resisted the urge to pull away. Fear wasn’t the most diplomatic emotion to convey. The claw was smooth and cold, reminding her of the ivory ship behind them. “Phoenix Highland at your service.”
Did they always speak like an old English book? Eri shook his branchlike hand. “Nice to meet you, Phoenix.”
“Are you going back to your ship?” He leaned forward and she could see her reflection in his eyes, a frightened and exhausted young woman who had stumbled upon a world she’d never dreamed could exist. Thinking about Litus, Tank, and Mars, she summoned courage and held her head up high to meet his emotionless gaze.
“No. I’ve come to ask for your help.”
Just as she wondered how she’d explain everything, Striver stepped in. “She’s located the surviving members of her team, and she wants to rescue them.” He gave her a reassuring nod. “The Lawless captured several of their weapons, and I think it would benefit us both if we confiscated them before the Lawless have a chance to use them. Besides, they’ll torture those colonists to death, and that doesn’t look good for our intergalactic communications.” He pointed to the mother ship, still hovering in the sky like a giant eye.
“Well thought-out, Striver.” Phoenix extended one of his fingers to the other one, making a circle. His large, placid eyes blinked.
Striver shifted, his gaze darting to the rising sun in the sky. “We don’t have time for another one of those town hall meetings. If we decide to save them, we must act now.”
Phoenix disconnected his two fingers as if he’d come to his conclusion. “You know this may anger members of the council?”
Striver regarded Eri as if she were worth it. “I’ll take my chances.”
“And you know the Guardians can’t help you carry out any act that may induce war or transfer anyone across the wall without the council’s consent.”
Striver didn’t wait one beat to reply. “Understood.”
“Very well. I’ll send word to the other Guardians. You organize another infantry force.”
Before Eri could thank Phoenix, he turned away and launched into the sky. A single feather drifted to the ground and Eri picked it up, feeling the soft hairs against the slender quill. Pure white fluff at the stem turned into a pinkish iridescence at the tip.
“That was easier than I thought.” Striver slumped back against the hull and sighed. “The hard part lies ahead.”
Touching the keypad on the laser gun reminded Weaver of the antique mineral locator passed down for generations in his family. His dad, as his father’s father before him, told him Aries Ryder used the device to find the missing piece of the
S.P. Nautilus
while on Sahara 354. As a boy, he’d hold it in front of him and pretend the locator still worked, trying to find precious minerals in the rock bed of the dried-up stream by their tree hut.
The way the laser gun’s keypad clicked under his touch made him feel like he had power at his fingertips. If only he could find the code to activate it.
“I bet the kid’s bluffing. He can’t figure out anything at all.” Snipe spit on the rock wall, and the drool trickled down, scaring away a spidermite.
Crusty waved his hand. “Give the kid a chance. What have we got to lose?”
“All our secrets taken back to those technohoarders, that’s what.” Snipe drew out his flint blade and sharpened it along the side of a rock with a
swhang
.
“What secrets? That pool of dreamy regret? Lasers we can’t use? Colony Lifers who won’t wake up?”
Weaver ignored them, punching in another series of numbers as he ran logarithms in his head. He’d always been good at math. But despite his progress, an ill seed of anxiety grew in Weaver’s chest. Was it Snipe’s teasing? No. People in his village had badgered him all his life. He was accustomed to snide remarks about not measuring up. Besides, no one was his friend on this side of the wall. Crusty and Snipe knew he was competition, and they’d take any chance they got to put him down.
This was a new feeling, an uncomfortable melancholy tainted by remorse. The feeling had started like an itch he couldn’t scratch after the dream. Plunged back in time, Weaver felt all the same feelings he’d experienced as a boy. But new feelings along with the old put the memory in a different light.
Striver and his dad weren’t holding him back that day. They never had. In fact, they’d convinced his mom to let him fish with them, and all he did was get them in trouble. Why did it take ten years to see his own selfishness?
Shaking his head, he tried the next set of numbers he’d systematically derived.
66459…
The laser gun buzzed in his hands, and the screen flashed on.
Weaver stared, hope rising in his chest.
I did it. I cracked the code.
His eyes flicked to where Snipe had been sitting against the rock wall. The floor was bare. Crusty stood, holding out his black flint blade.
“Nice job, Weasel.” Snipe’s voice echoed from behind him.
Weaver whirled around to the tip of an arrow aimed at his forehead.
“Give the gun to Crusty and we’ll let you live.”
He squashed down his fear.
Think. You’ve made it out of tough situations before this.
Weaver swallowed, keeping his tone even. “You have to let me live. I’m the only one who knows the code.”
Snipe lowered his arrow to the right. “True. But you can live without your right arm.”
Weaver’s heart sped up, the muscles in his arms tensing. He needed his shoulder to use his bow. Without it, he was nothing.
“Wait!” Weaver placed the laser on the cave floor. His fingers lingered on the trigger before he slid it to Crusty.
“Good.” Snipe grinned. “Crusty, take the gun to Jolt. Tell him Weaver cracked the code. I’ll stay here and watch the prisoners.”
The way he said
prisoners
made Weaver think he was one of them.
Great. I’ve managed to fall from disgraced brother to lackey to captive.
“Sure thing.” Crusty stumbled to his feet and dusted off his pants. He bent down to pick up the weapon, holding it away from his body like it was a bomb. Some pirates on Refuge still feared technology.
Ignorant idiots. Technology’s the thing that’s going to make me famous. All I have to do is steal back that laser.
The back of the cave stirred with movement. Weaver checked on the prisoners. The man with light blond hair coughed and squirmed against his restraints. His voice was hoarse. “Where am I?”
“Interesting,” Snipe muttered under his breath. He strutted over and crouched down to the prisoner’s level to meet eye to eye. “You’re in hell.”
…
The wall rose in a slab of mold-coated concrete like the structure of a long-forgotten civilization, refusing to crumble. Eri tilted her head up, trying to decipher how tall the wall stood. The concrete ended in a tangle of branches and leaves.
Striver placed his hand upon the surface gently, almost in reverence. “Here it is—the one obstacle that stands between us and the Lawless lands.”
“How do we cross it?” Eri scratched her arm, the new clothing Striver had given her irritating her skin. He said she wouldn’t make it ten meters in the jungle without being spotted in her old gear, but she didn’t know if she’d make it ten meters without stopping to scratch her back underneath the rough weave of the fabric. The embroidered green tunic made her look like some medieval minstrel from her old Celtic texts, and the tight leather leggings didn’t exactly help. Thank goodness they let her keep her boots.
“We have to climb over it.” Striver pulled back a cluster of ferns, revealing ladder rungs stuck into the cement. “There’s only a few places on the wall equipped with these, and the rungs are only on our side. We’ll have to use ropes to scale down.”
Behind them, a small party of four of the village’s strongest men and women scouted the area. Eri cast a glance over her shoulder, taking advantage of their moment alone. “Do you think three people are enough?”
“Phoenix thinks a smaller party can infiltrate the camp and steal your team and their weapons without causing a major battle and any further loss of life. Besides, they outnumber us three-to-one.”
Eri swallowed down a current of panic. “Not many people want to live by the rules, eh?”
“We lose more over the wall every year. Faced with a choice, I guess not.”
“Cyberhell. Your rules don’t seem as bad as the ones aboard the
Heritage
.”
Striver grinned. “You’re telling me.”
Eri caught Striver’s green gaze and they froze, her gaze locked on his.
Maybe he isn’t all that different after all?
A bird rustled the canopy above, and the branches rained leaves. One fell in Eri’s hair, and Striver brushed it off. A warm glow surged inside her.
“Striver, the coast is clear.”
Eri and Striver whirled around. Riley stood with his arms crossed. Suddenly, three people seemed one person too many.
Although it took her a few seconds to recover, Striver didn’t miss a beat. “You sure?”
“Phoenix did a sweep of the area. There’s no Lawless on the other side.”
Striver turned back to her. “Ready?”
She felt her laser on her hip and nodded.
“Good. I’ll go first.” He gave her a serious look. “When you’re climbing, don’t look down.”
Riley stepped in, his blue eyes gleaming with distrust. “You sure we should bring her with us?”
Anger blazed on her cheeks and Eri waved him off. She didn’t like him any better than his pushy sister. “I’ll be fine. They’re my team and rescuing them was my idea. Besides, I’m the one with the laser.”
Riley looked up at the trees in disdain. “Why Striver gave that thing back to you, I haven’t the slightest.”
Eri hated being questioned. Not only did she have to prove herself, but he was right. They shouldn’t have given the laser back to her. She could turn on them at any time—not that she would. They were helping her save her friends. To shoot them in the back would break every rule of decency. Striver trusted her—she could feel it. He believed in her, and that’s all she needed.
She took a deep breath. She wasn’t about to go into some big speech. “Because I can use it to defend us.”
All Riley did was harrumph in response.
Ignoring Riley’s tone, Eri turned to the wall. She’d climbed the plastic rock wall on the physical activity deck many times, and that wall had no ladder rungs for handholds. But it did have cables holding her up if she fell.
Eri breathed deeply, trying to calm the fury raging inside her. Why did she care so much about their opinions? Driven to show these tree-dwellers that she could survive on their turf, she bounced on her heels behind Striver, waiting for her turn.
What did they think the people on the
Heritage
did all day? Recline in their sleep pods?
Striver climbed, skipping every other rung, as if he’d scaled the wall a thousand times. Adrenaline pumped through her as Eri grabbed the first bar and leapt up. The metal was cold and slick underneath her palms, and she wished she had powder to keep from slipping. Riley followed behind her.
The higher she climbed, the sweatier her hands grew. She kept wiping them on her new tunic, wrapping her arm around the rung for balance. In between each set of ten, she took her time, catching her breath.
Remember what he said. Don’t look down.
The last thing she wanted to do was fall on Riley’s head. He already disliked her and she hadn’t even said three words to him.
Eri climbed through the branches obscuring the top of the wall. Twigs with spiraling thorns pulled at her curls, and furry, pin-sized bugs kept flying in her eyes, ears and mouth. She needed both hands to keep her death grip and couldn’t bat the insects away.
Twenty or so rungs left to go.
Striver had already reached the top and crouched down, offering her his hand. “Almost there, Eri.”
It was the first time she’d heard him speak her name, and the way he looked at her, like he believed she could do it, made her think of Aquaria. Homesickness washed over her and she forced herself to toughen up.
I have to save Litus for Aquaria. I owe it to my sister and my team.
Eri increased her pace. The air thinned, and her heart beat hard, making her dizzy. She glanced down despite Striver’s advice, and Riley’s head popped out of the canopy of trees. He furrowed his eyebrows and she whipped her face back up. Clinging to her goals, she cleared her head and stepped up another rung.