Flight (6 page)

"I'll come along too, then it won't be awkward."

I turn back and nod my head at him as I eyeball the few wannabes who are still meeting my gaze. "What do you mean? Why would it be awkward?"

He puts his hand on my shoulder and looks back at the girls as he turns me around so they can't see us talk. "Oh, I guess you wouldn't know then. Right. Esta and Ryse have been," he stops, "together, you know." He shrugs. "So, you don't want to be the third wing, right?"

"Huh, that makes sense somehow. Ryse is into that mythology bullshit too, isn't he?"

Ashur exhales heavily. "Yeah, they're actually perfect for each other. She got her pheromones removed, did you know that?"

I shake my head. "No, I didn't. Good for her, that shit was so annoying."

"Yeah." Ashur turns us back around and raises his voice. "OK?"

I nod. "Let's shoot them then."

I watch the girls panic and begin whispering to each other as Ashur signals the guys to charge the weapons.

"OK, ladies, turn around and put your hands on the wall. Today's test is being shot with the plasma rifle. You'll have fifteen minutes to recover, and then you will run fifty laps in the training room."

Obviously none of them have ever been pulsed with a plasma because if they did, they'd know it takes you hours to recover from that shit and even the best smoke-free lungs on the habitat wouldn't have a chance delivering enough oxygen for crawling fifteen minutes later, let alone running.

They begin to protest so I play the first card. "If this isn't what you signed up for, leave. I can't even count the number of times I've been shot with a plasma so this is excellent training. Plus we get to see–"

The first girl cracks and walks out. "Oi!" I call. "You haven't even heard the part about the SEAR knife yet!"

They start yelling at me and I just smile. "Hey, if you don't like it, there's the door."

In the end there are only two left.

Two stinking girls.

Tessen was clearly warned by Tier because she didn't even flinch through any of my threats.

The other girl's name is Lili and she looks like she'd be equally at home in my princess room back on Earth or flying around on a wire at the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve holding a candle, she is that angelic.

I shake her hand, then remember she's probably never done that before when she looks at me, confused. "So, are you and Tessen friends?"

The small blonde girl scrunches up her face. "Who's Tessen? I thought you said you were going to shoot us?"

"Never mind, Lili. You're officially my new favorite. Welcome to the warriors." I wave Ashur over. "So what do you want to do with Lili then? Tessen is just gonna go back to Tier's team."

He shakes his head. "Sorry, Lili, you're going over to Monk in Justice." He eyes me with a small sneer. "He liked having a girl, it seems. Probably can't get the image of your naked body out of his head."

My face scrunches up at Ashur, but he just pushes Lili on the shoulder a little and they walk towards the door where Ryse intercepts them. I watch them talk as Ashur looks over at me. He nods and all three of them come back over.

"Junco," Ryse starts, "Lucan says I have to take you over to Esta. So," he shrugs, "let's go."

I look over to Ashur and he smiles a little too sweetly. "Monk's at a meeting with Lucan and Rache, so Lili and I will tag along too."

Lili gets to come now? Perfect. "Huh. Whatever happened to third wing, Ashur? You're such an asshole." I wave Ryse on and follow him out towards the trains.

Esta is thrilled to see me when we finally arrive at the museum almost an hour later. She barely notices Ryse, so I don't know what Ashur was talking about with the whole third wing thing. And Ryse, for his part, is so interested in the artifacts he hardly notices anything else.

"Junco?"

I turn and look at her, then smile at my sister. "Esta, I'm not really interested, but Lucan says he wants you to explain stuff about," I wave my hand to the hundreds of cylinder seals lining the walls, "all this stuff." There's quite a lot of artifacts and I don't recognize a single one and I've seen the entire private collection at the British Museum. "Where did you guys get it all? I mean, are these copies of what we have on Earth?"

Esta links her arm in mine and begins walking towards the wall. "No, Junco. We have all the important ones. We only left the broken ones, or duplicates, or ones made by inconsequential artisans, back on Earth."

I nod, appreciating the display. "Do you have any of Inanna?"

She beams down at me from her slightly superior height. "Earth has no true images of Inanna, or many of the others, either. We have them all. Here, I'll show you." She walks over to one cast hanging on the wall next to the cylinder seal that, when rolled on wet clay, can make the impression of images that can then be visualized. They make a repeating pattern if you roll the seal more than one continuous turn, so it's like a wallpaper border my grandma might have had near the ceiling in her bathroom.

Esta points to the figure in the middle of the scene. "This is Inanna, Junco." I study the woman who has inserted herself into my life with such force. Her hair is wild, her chest is bare of clothing, and her dress is lined with jewels. She has many weapons: spears, a knife, a bow with a quiver, something that looks like a pickax, and a wand.

A very small wand that she holds in her hand, her thumb near the top. As if she's ready to flick it on.

I point to the little wand. "What's that?" I look over at Esta and she's smiling so big she can hardly contain it.

"That's her lapis rod."

I nod. "Oh, OK. That thing she gave the first gatekeeper when she went to the world down below."

Esta looks surprised. "Who told you that story?"

I sigh at the memory. "Tier. When we were bathing in a hot spring back on Earth. It was a nice night. Before the nightdog ate my fingers, of course."

Esta stares at me, her face serious. "You have a lapis rod too, ya know."

My hand reaches into my shirt and I pull out my SEAR. "Is it lapis? I never knew that."

I hand it to Esta's outstretched hand. No one has ever asked to see it before. She palms it and flicks her thumb over the small imperfection in the stone but of course, it doesn't power on. It's coded for me and she's not done anything to try and fake my print like Aren did that last night on Earth. "You're Inanna, Junco."

I shake my head. "I absolutely am not Inanna, Esta. That is so much bullshit."

She just laughs. "Very close, if not."

I look around and find Ashur directly behind me, Lili is off with Ryse looking at something. Esta hands me back the SEAR and I look it over carefully. "It's blue, but I don't think it's lapis lazuli, Esta. It looks synthetic."

"It's not really lapis. I was kidding. But it is weird that you have a rod of power." She shrugs one shoulder. "I think it is anyway."

"So, I'm the killer then? Or what? I have to say, I really despise this myth. And if any of you were told your destiny is to kill people, you'd never want to hear about it again, either."

Ashur moves in closer to me and I look up at him. "It's all bad stuff, Ashur. I'm the outcast, I'm the evil one, I'm the killer, I'm the impure one. I'm tired of hearing it."

He squeezes my shoulder as Esta begins talking. "Junco, in my opinion, that is a misinterpretation. You see, the myth in the original cuneiform is marked off like this." She takes my hand and pulls me over to a long tablet filled with columns of ancient Sumerian. "This image," she points to a glyph, "has been translated as outsider or outcast. But it can just as easily mean shepherd or leader." She looks down at me. "I think it says you're the leader – the shepherd to bring us together. That's why you're always out front." She takes my hand again and leads me over to another plaque and points to a group of seven dots. Six of them are lined up like the six dots you see on dice. "You're this one." Her finger gently touches the single dot at the head of the group. "The leader, see?"

I nod. "OK."

"They're all like that, Junco." She takes me to several more and points to the group of seven, six lined up in two short rows, and the seventh out in front of them. "They've misinterpreted the myth. And while all of you think I'm not important in all this, I happen to think I can read them a little better than the rest of you for a reason. It's my gift. Like Junco has her warrior skills, I have the history inside me." She looks around to see what we think. "I can just read them. It's easy."

"So how did the Seven get on Earth? And where the fuck have the genetics been for all this time?"

She shakes her head at this one. "That, we have no idea. There is nothing that points to where the containers were hidden and none of the humans have ever divulged how they came to have them. We don't even know who started it all, or why they knew they had to."

I smile and feel a genuine love for Esta. "You're right, Esta. You're good at this. I bet we all have gifts. I wonder what Moju's gift is?" I'm lost in thought and when I look up Ryse is next to Esta and has his arm around her, making her feel important. I smile at them both. "Hey, have you ever looked at the cuneiform writing on the Fallen Archer church over at Fledge? I'd love it if you could translate that for me."

"Sure, Junco." She inhales and lifts her chest up a little. I made her feel important too. And I didn't even do it on purpose, I just really want another opinion on what that shit says for some reason.

"We already read that translation, Junco." Ashur is looking down at me with a weird look on his face.

"Yeah, but it didn't fit with what I thought it would say. Even though the words I translated came out about right. If Esta's the expert in this stuff, then I'd like to hear what she has to say about it."

"Junco, how many fucking times do I have to tell you to leave that fucking church alone?"

Isten is walking towards me, covering significant ground with each stride, angry as all hell. I just stare at him. "What do you mean? You said don't go fucking praying to her so she wouldn't mess up the end. It wasn't her anyway, it was Sera all along."

He grabs me by the arm. "Come on, we've got to go fit you for rifles and armor."

In the flyer Isten is distant and looks out the window. I'm not interested in why he's in such a bad mood, so I ignore him and rest my head back to think. I wonder if Ashur is going to take Lili out to dinner? This makes my stomach rumble and I look over at Isten, who has not even turned in my direction once since he picked me up. I sigh and give in. "Why are you angry with me?"

"Huh?" He looks over, his mouth in a crooked sneer.

"You're angry with me?" A question this time.

He shakes his head, but it's not convincing. "I'm not." Then the flyer stops and he pushes me to get out on the passenger side.

We exit onto a store front platform. The sign reads Aves Supply. Which pretty much says it all, right? We're here for military shit.

Inside it's more like a private club than a gun shop. A tall thin wingless man, in a suit that reminds me of Lucan, greets us and they talk in Avian. I'm not that good at picking up the words when they're talking so fast, but I get the basic idea.

A set of double doors open and lead to a waiting room. Isten takes a seat and lights up a cigarette as he stretches his legs and focuses on the screen showing sports. The thin guy takes me by the arm and pulls me to another door, then whisks me through into what looks more like a tailor's dressing room than a military outfitter.

A team of people come out and begin to measure me. They lift my arms straight up towards the ceiling and tell me not to move. Then another team spreads my legs a little and begins the lower body measurements. When they've finished another man begins on my wings. It tickles like fuck, but I try to stand still.

None of them are very personable and my mood is going sour fast. When the wingman touches my girls for like the hundredth time I smack him in the jaw. "Don't do it again or you'll be sorry."

He huffs at me and disappears.

The tall thin man returns. "Is there a problem?"

I smile sweetly. "Yes, there is. If you want to feel me up then the least you can do is be personable and polite while you're fucking doing it. If you people want to walk around me like I'm nonexistent and act like you can touch me wherever you–"

"Junco."

I turn to Isten. "What?"

He walks over to the suit guy and asks in Avian if I'm done with armor fitting. I just scowl as they converse like I'm not even here. Then Isten and the tall man walk me back to another part of the shop so they can let me shoot some guns. I smile as I walk up to the practice lane and inspect the line of weapons they have laid out.

One set is from Earth. "Hey, are these my sniper rifles?"

Isten pulls himself from the guy and walks over. "Yeah, Rikan and I stole all your shit, remember?"

I breathe out and answer in a whisper. "You never said you took the
guns
."

This makes me so happy I can't even think straight. My rifles are special. I mean, I've used these weapons for years now, the same ones have been fitted and refitted several dozen times since I started sniper training. I know every fraction of them, how they shoot cold bore, how to set the manual scope so it reads right the first time, how to keep the one-shot scope from false set, their little quirks and idiosyncrasies, and exactly what it feels like when I'm out of shots and they need to be fitted again.