Skyland (16 page)
Harper had only been in the city a few
times. His family was farmers, not traders. There wasn't much need
to cross the bridge. On the few occasions they had, the weight of
the city's population growth had been very apparent. Sprawling
malls were filled with shoppers and traders, stacked workspaces
rose high into the Sky and long lines of people waiting to get into
the buildings. Everywhere people went about their business, bumping
into each other, talking loudly, arms full of... things in bags;
Harper didn't even know what they could possibly be buying all the
time, but buy they did in the city. And there were always plenty of
people around looking for a deal on something.
The last time had been the worst.
Harper shuddered remembering the vast masses
of people crowding the docks before the first ship left. His
stomach twisted imagining a similar scene for the second ship's
launch.
Now, as much as he could see of the city was
empty of anyone but military personnel and the civilians from the
ship. Harper took a last look at the docks as they walked away.
Aside from the Skyland defense units, there were no locals. Foreign
troops and bemused Union civilians shielded their eyes from the
bright sun, fanning themselves with notebooks or folders or their
hands. But there were no other Skylanders. Not city folk. Not
country folk.
"Maybe they don't feel welcome in their own
city," he said.
"Yeah." The soldier looked over at Harper,
his smile was dimmed. He dipped his head and didn't quite make eye
contact. "Maybe they're scared."
"Maybe..."
It was the same bridge.
Harper looked at the white stone running in
graceful arches along the paved road over the trickling river
between the city and its outskirts and the country beyond. The
stones were the same. The arches, the pavement, the gentle rise and
fall of the road: it was all the same. Nothing about the spot had
changed since he stood here with his father and Zara just a few
days ago.
But that was a different life.
At the apex of the bridge, Harper paused.
The outlying buildings leered at him from the far side. A shiver
went through him. His heart thudded at the memory of the last time
that he had stood on that spot, stood there with his father,
watched the twisting of the wrathful face, the face he himself had
worn so many times.
The scavenger's face.
He twitched and whirled around.
But there was no one in the shadows at the
edge of the bridge this time. The sun was high in the Sky now and
the shady patches were small and nothing sat in the dark dirt
waiting for him. It was only in his memory – his father and the
scavenger, like angry sentinels on either side of the road. Harper
took a breath and tried to calm the panic that had seeped back into
him. The creeping fear dripped back into his mind as if from the
stone of the bridge itself. The panic fought to thrust him back in
time, back to the last day when he stood here – the day he
recognized the angry face in the long shadows. It pinged his
consciousness back and back, again and again and again to that
moment of recognition, the moment of decision, as if to say,
Are
you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?
Another breath.
Another step.
A new wave of fear began to encroach on the
panic and the flashbacks.
Traitor... traitor...
Harper shook
his head trying to get the words out. He looked around as though
his old man would be standing there waiting for him to return,
hissing at the traitor to the Sky.
Abomination...
"Coming?"
Harper jumped yet again at the guard's
voice. Being back on Skyland was making him twitchy. While he had
paused, the young soldier had continued to the far end of the
bridge where he now waited.
Stop.
Harper shook the old Sky Reverend's voice
out of his head and hurried to catch up. A moment later, they were
passing the outlying city buildings and heading into deep
country.
"Where are we going?" he asked again.
"Our base is just past the outskirts. Out of
the way. For security, you know?"
"Hm."
More secure in the country than the
city?
Just over the bridge, where the land got
flat and the buildings almost disappeared, Harper looked around,
still wondering where exactly they could be headed. A few black
ships dotted the landscape in clusters and lone towers. But there
weren't any buildings, and they weren't headed towards any village
Harper knew of. After a few minutes–
The ship.
The only things Harper could see directly in
their path were the giant and black needle-like weapons. A loose
knot of these ships stood together – eight, nine, ten maybe?
Harper squinted, trying to count. Maybe a dozen of them stood
together in a rough circle. But they were not headed for one of
these, they were headed to the thing at the center of the circle. A
towering obelisk, like all the Skyland vessels put together.
It was a ship.
A ship exactly like the others, black
needles stuck in the desert, but massive. This one was a
javelin.
"I thought you said we were going to a
base," he said.
"This
is
the base. Convenient, isn't
it? Whole thing just picks up and flies off to the next
assignment."
"Mmhm."
Harper couldn't find words for the thing in
front of them. It wasn't a
ship
or a
base
... It
was... it was a
war
. War-on-the-go. A moveable fortress. A
winged occupation.
Now that they were walking around it's side,
Harper could see it was not exactly like the other ships. Far, far
up, poking at the Sky even from the ground, far, far above them, a
giant red band curved halfway around the black surface of the
ship's sharp nose.
It was a flag.
A flag stabbed into the ground of
Skyland.
It was the solid flag of the Union, the flag
had that washed out all others long, long ago in a show of unity:
no symbols, no patterns, no other shades. Just red. The color all
people had inside.
Somewhere beside Harper the young guard was
still talking.
"... you'll be staying here while we're
securing the area and investigating and whatnot..."
"Mmhm."
"...putting down some roots and stuff. I
don't really know when you'll be needed..."
"Mmhm."
"...you don't need to worry about anything
for the moment, it'll all just be standard arrival procedure for a
while..."
"Mmhm."
Arrival procedure? You mean
invasion?
"...nothing too fancy, but it's temperature
controlled and out of the sun. You'll be able to relax for a
while."
Harper laughed. The word – the second time
from the lips of a soldier going to war,
relax
– shocked the
reaction out of him, his neck swiveled back around, down from the
sharp red flag, to the young soldier next to him. He stared at him,
still laughing.
Relax. Right. It'll be a real vacatio–
"Identification and destination?"
Harper stopped short, almost running into
one of the civilians ahead of them.
"What?"
They were at a fence. Fifty feet ahead was
the base of the giant ship. They had caught up to the handful of
civilians and soldiers they'd been following. A break in the fence
had bottlenecked the newcomers.
"Identification and destination?"
The guard at the fence addressed the group
in front of Harper. They rattled off unit numbers and names and
other information Harper didn't understand.
"Identification and destination?"
Harper faced the guard now.
"Um,"
"Unit 721, west residence, and I have..." he
shuffled around in his pockets for a minute before pulling out a
miniature tablet, which he poked a couple times "ID for me and the
local." He turned the glowing screen towards the guard who
nodded.
Then they were past the fence.
At the door to the base, which had snapped
shut behind the group they'd been following, the young soldier hit
some numbers on a keypad. It opened and then they were inside, in
another black hallway.
The sun disappeared behind them, and the
scorching heat vanished as the door slammed shut.
The group of soldiers and civilians were
still just ahead. A few steps into the ship, they turned left when
the hall came to a T. Harper turned to follow them, but his guard
put out a hand to stop him.
"This way."
They turned right and Harper looked back
over his shoulder at the others with a sinking feeling in his
stomach he couldn't quite explain. He wondered if those civilians
were soldiers-to-be, like the Union worker Ben, recruited for
service at the last minute. None wore the uniforms of the Union
Transport workers but they did not look like Skylanders. He
wondered if they were like him, threatened to help. Grinning and
chatting, they didn't look threatened. What Harper could hear of
their voices sounded light and curious, almost excited. He wondered
why he was headed in a completely different direction down an empty
and silent hall while their voices disappeared in the opposite
direction.
"Why were there so many civilians on the
ship?" he asked to take his mind off his nerves.
"Volunteers. Experts. Non-military
contractors."
"Where did they come from?"
"Some we picked up from the periphery bases
before you joined up. One or two came from the Skyland ship. Just
folks like you that want to help."
...want to help? Ha.
"Oh."
The soldier stopped. "Well..." he started.
They were standing at the door to the smallest room Harper had ever
seen. "It's not exactly a luxury suite, but at
least..." He seemed unable to finish the sentence with
anything that would make the accommodations sound any better.
Harper smiled. Then he laughed – only for a
second before stifling it. Seemed inappropriate, somehow, to be
laughing at anything in this fortress.
"It's fine," he said.
The room was barely longer than he was tall.
It would be just long enough for him to lay down on the bed – an
actual bed, not a hammock – that was shoved in it. There were two
pillows piled on each other on the narrow bed frame and a blanket,
or perhaps several blankets, it was hard to tell how many pieces
made up the puffy mass of fabric on the bed. Again, Harper wondered
where on Skyland a person would have need of a blanket. Even inside
the ship-base, cooler than in the naked sunlight, the heat
thickened the air. The coverings on the bed were thick and puffy
and white and looked like kind of clouds that Skyland didn't have
and he'd only seen in pictures. They also seemed entirely
useless.
Well, at least they will be
soft,
he thought, remembering the plastic chain links
digging into his back on the last ship.
"Well, the facilities here are better than
on the small ships," the soldier beside him continued. "Bathroom's
down the hall this way. On your left." He gestured with one hand.
"Meals in the mess, same direction take a right then two lefts. You
hungry now?"
"Not really."
It was some hours into the afternoon, and
he'd last eaten some bits of dried food at breakfast – what, on a
military vessel, constituted breakfast – before leaving the smaller
ship. But he wasn't hungry then, and was less so now. His stomach
crawled with nerves.
"I can show you that for dinner later, if
you'd like. If you're up for it. Other than that... you're free to
wander around, but take me with you. I'll be your guide here. I'll
be here days, mostly, but if you need something after nightfall and
I'm off, let one of the night watchers know. They can either help
you out themselves or they can come find me. And... that's about
it."
"'Guide?'"
"What?"
"You said you're my...
guide
."
This time Harper laughed openly, but it was a bitter laugh. "You
meant
guard
of course."
"Well, I'm more of a guide than a guard. I'm
here for your protection, but mostly to show you around."
"My protection?"
"Well, you can't be popular for arriving
with us."
"Right."
"But really, you have nothing to worry
about. The base is crawling with soldiers and surveillance, you're
about as safe as anybody here."
Safe as anybody.
"Hmmm.."
"So I'm really just here to help you get
acquainted with your new accommodations and see you're taken care
of when you're not needed by the investigators."
And when will that be?
"I'm... 'taken
care of?'"
"Yeah, make sure you can make the best of it
here. I know it's not much, but at least you've got you're own
room. Maybe the bed's a bit more comfortable.... Sorry,
though."
"It's fine," Harper said.
He meant it, too. On Skyland, Harper had
never slept in a room alone. That was a luxury which few of the
dilapidated cabins in the country afforded, and few of the country
folk wanted. Solitude was not a comfort. But the young soldier said
it like it was, and his smile said
Hey, make the best of it,
right?
So Harper smiled back.
"It's fine," he said again.
"Well I'll leave you alone, then. I'll be in
this sector, so if you need anything, just shout. Otherwise... rest
up."
Doubtful.
"Hmm."
The soldier turned to leave. Then–
"Wait," Harper called after him. "What's
your name?"
"Wills."
"Wills... thanks." Harper waved awkwardly
and stepped towards the room.
"See you." Wills smiled, and then he was
gone.