Transcendent (9781311909442) (4 page)

Krys caught himself before he tried to chew
on his fingernails again and clenched his fist. He wasn’t a baby;
he didn’t do that anymore! He turned and started walking towards
the village again, sticking to the trees even though it was slower
going than the now twice cleared road the army had made.

Krys glanced at his watch and saw that it
was nearing his bedtime. Not that he was still a kid who needed a
bedtime, but he tried to be in bed and asleep near the end of
second rot. With a Venerian day lasting so long, they went with the
Earth standard of a twenty-four-hour day. They split it into three
periods: first, second, and third rots. Rot was short for rotation.
Krys’s dad worked and his mom taught at the school during first
rot. That left second rot for personal time and third rot for
sleeping.

For him, at least. Other families were on
different rots. Almost all of the kids shared his schedule, though;
it made it easier on the teachers or something.

Krys was pulled out of his thoughts of his
normal day when he started to see his colony through the edge of
the forest. He’d gotten used to the smoke but now he was stunned
again by what he saw. Buildings and machines were broken and
destroyed. Smoke still rose from a few, but mostly they lay
destroyed. He saw a few soldiers moving about, but mostly it seemed
silent and empty. Abandoned. Dead.

Krys swallowed hard. Were his parents gone?
Had they been—he shook his head. No, they couldn’t be. They hadn’t
done anything wrong! His dad was smart; he’d keep them safe. At
worst they’d be captured. He nodded. He had to find them. The army
wouldn’t destroy everything, would they?

He pushed through the brush until he reached
the creek where the horrible day had started. Krys turned his head
to the left and right and picked out landmarks of where he’d played
with his friends his entire life. To the right, he could make out
the bend where he and Devon had been hiding. Only a few meters
beyond the edge of where the forest had been razed was where Pita
had stood. He wondered if she’d been flattened by the army as
easily as the forest was.

Krys shook his head and climbed down the
bank and crossed over the stream. He paused and stuck his hands in
the cool water, rubbing them to clean them and then bringing some
water to his lips. He tasted the same water he’d drank from a
thousand times before and, for a few peaceful seconds, didn’t think
about what was going on. He ran out of water in his hands and was
forced to stand up and look around.

Everything had changed. His village was in
shambles and the forest where he’d built a lifetime of memories had
been ripped into pieces. He sniffed and blinked, forcing back the
tears. He took a deep breath like he’d seen his dad do every time
he had a new job to do and turned to climb up the far bank. He had
to find his family. And Lily’s too. They needed to know what he’d
seen. Even if it was the worst news he could imagine, they deserved
to know.

Krys waited long enough that he’d gotten an
idea of how people were moving. He hadn’t spotted anyone from the
village yet, just soldiers and other people wearing blue and white
uniforms. The people in blue and white weren’t soldiers, or at
least they didn’t carry any guns. They looked different, too. More
normal.

The soldiers weren’t doing much, just
wandering around and talking to one another. The people in uniforms
were picking through the wreckage and cleaning up. Krys watched
them come and go and wondered how he was ever going to find
anything. There were too many of them wandering about and it was
too bright out.

Krys turned his attention to the power cells
that were fed by the energy channeled down from the solar shield.
The tower of power, as they called it, was still standing. It
stretched over twenty meters into the sky. His dad worked on that,
too, sometimes, but since there weren’t any moving parts, it didn’t
break down very often. The power cells would last a hundred years
each, and there was something like two hundred of them buried
beneath the colony. It was enough to keep them at full power
through an entire night and have plenty of energy to spare.

Krys stared up, following where he imagined
the invisible energy beam was to the sky above. The sun was blotted
out by the solar shield in orbit, but enough light was still
allowed through to cause a shimmering circle in the sky. Lily used
to stare at it and talk about how pretty it was, especially when it
rained and it caused rainbows all over the place. Krys had never
paid much attention to that; his head was on more practical things
like what game they would play next or any troubles he was having
at school. Lily was enough of a dreamer for both of them.

Except Lily was gone. Losing her left him
without any dreams, either of her or for himself.

Krys’s stomach cramped, pinching as he
watched men and women picking through the remains of Grunnar
Stevens house. Mr. Stevens had been on the village council as the
paymaster. He kept track of the crop yield and who got paid what.
Krys had hardly ever spoken to him, but his dad said he was a
little shy in the social department, but fair and understanding
when it came down to it. Whatever that meant. Now he was just
another missing person with a house that had a corner smashed in,
exposing it to the outside.

Krys turned away and looked to the east. The
haze of smoke that hung over the village was missing, or not as
thick. His stomach twisted as he considered starting there.
Kilometer after kilometer of fruit trees and hardy vineyards that
could stand up to the abundant sunlight and equally long winters.
Krys nodded. He needed to eat something first, and then he could
worry about looking for his family and friends.

He climbed back down into the creek bed and
followed it to the east, pausing every so often to check and make
sure there was no one nearby. After he’d walked well beyond the
easternmost edge of the colony, he climbed out and made his way
into the stands of mango trees. He wandered through them, staring
up and wondering how he could get one down. The leaves were a good
twenty-five to thirty meters off the ground.

Krys turned his attention to the ground and
started searching for fallen fruit. It was rare that one fell and
rarer still that it wasn’t collected to be composted. Still, he had
to look. That or try to steal one of the highpicker machines that
went from tree to tree and harvest the fruit. The odds were good
there were some out and about if he could find a field with ripe
fruit in it.

Krys wandered through the fields until he
heard a noise. He froze and turned until he saw two people wearing
white and blue uniforms walking through the fields. He dropped to
his belly and crawled over behind the trunk of a mango tree so he
could watch them.

“There’s something over there!” one of them,
a woman, cried out.

Krys’s heart leapt into his throat. He
risked a quick look and saw the speaker was pointing away from him.
He followed her hand and saw what she’d seen: a crop transporter
sitting on a roadway between fields. Resting on top of it was one
of the highpickers. It was exactly what he needed, but they’d seen
it first.

They started walking towards it, leaving
Krys lying on the ground and wondering what to do. He could keep
looking: there were bound to be other transporters and picking
machines that had been sent out before the soldiers came. But what
if other people were looking for them, just like these two
were?

Krys watched them as they reached the
transporter. The smaller of the two, the woman who had spoken loud
enough for him to hear, said something to her partner before she
turned and kept walking farther into the fields. Krys watched her
go and frowned, and then he nodded to himself. He would follow her.
Maybe she’d find another one, or if not that, maybe he could at
least learn something about her.

He climbed to his feet and moved from tree
to tree, moving as quiet as he could until the worker climbed into
the cab of the transport and started it up. Krys paused to watch it
head back to town and then turned towards the woman. He’d lost
sight of her, but he knew the direction she’d gone in. He just had
to catch up.

Krys jogged through the rows of mango trees
and noticed how she was cutting across the field. It made sense;
that way she could intercept another road and look for more of the
deployed transporters. What he hadn’t counted on was running into
the end of the mango fields and stepping into fields filled with
orange trees.

Krys gulped and looked around. The orange
trees were shorter. He could see under most of them, but not all.
Smaller trees also meant they were put closer together, which made
seeing anything almost impossible beyond a couple dozen meters. He
frowned and considered swearing before he realized the oranges were
just turning ripe and were within arm’s reach.

He put the woman out of his mind as he
plucked the first orange and stuck his thumb into the skin to peel
it away. Juice ran down his hand and, a few seconds later, his
chin. He grinned at the sweet citrus taste and slurped the pulp
between his teeth. The taste of a fresh orange was even more
liberating than drinking from the stream had been.

He swatted lazily at a honeybee that buzzed
too close to him and turned, reaching for a second orange. He
stopped when he saw the woman standing there and staring at him.
She looked impeccable in her blue and white shirt and blue pants.
Black boots completed the outfit on the bottom and almost matched
her dark brown hair that she wore just above her collar.

He stared at her, not knowing what to say.
Her eyes narrowed and she craned her head to look around. No doubt
for reinforcements. She opened her mouth and started to draw in a
large breath.

“Wait!” Krys hissed at her. “Please! I
don’t—”

Krys heard a sharp crack, like a tree branch
snapping in the forest, and then saw the woman stumble forward. She
fell face first on the ground and didn’t move. Krys took a step
towards her, confused by the sudden fall. What had happened to her?
And what was that noise? Did she break something?

He stopped when he saw the light glisten off
the back of her head. It wasn’t all dark and shiny hair back there;
there was blood, too.

Krys looked around and saw more figures
moving through the orange grove. Three of them, and they were
hurrying. He turned and stared behind him, wondering if he’d walked
into a trap. He turned back, realizing they weren’t wearing either
the soldier’s camouflage or the blue and white of the workers.

“Krys? Stars above, boy, is that really
you?”

“Mr. Strain?” Krys breathed when he
recognized the voice of Lily’s father.

Mig Strain crashed into him and swept him up
in a hug that threatened to crush his chest and back. He felt
something wet on his cheek and neck before the ground was under his
feet again. He stared up and saw the tears on Mr. Strain’s cheeks
before he noticed the gun slung across his back.

“You’ve got a gun,” Krys noticed.

Mig ignored him. “Krys, are you alone? Is
there anyone else out there?”

“Anyone else? What? No. Um, sir, about Lily,
she—”

Mr. Strain reached out and put his hand on
Krys’s shoulder, stopping him. “I know, son; she’s been taken.”

“Taken?” Krys asked. “But I saw her in the
forest—”

“They rounded up what children they could,”
Mig said. “Sent them off for reeducation. Shot those of us who
hadn’t got away already. You were in the forest? Good for you!”

“What? Sir? Reeducation? I don’t understand.
What about my parents? Are they—did they—”

Mr. Strain guided Krys to walk beside him as
he turned. “Come on, son. We’ve got a long walk and a longer talk
ahead of us.”

“Sir?”

Mig sighed. “Krys, I hate to tell you this,
but your folks are gone.”

Krys stumbled and, with Mr. Strain’s help,
managed to catch himself. They were gone? He looked up and saw the
fresh tears in the man’s eyes. Gone didn’t mean they’d left him
behind. Gone meant they were dead. He swallowed and turned his head
to stare at the ground. Mr. Strain guided him as they walked,
telling him about the invasion as though Krys stood a chance of
remembering a single thing the man said.

“Lily, wait up!”

Lily stopped in the hallway outside of the
classroom and clutched her pad to her chest. She glanced up and saw
two other kids in her class hurry to catch up to her, as well as an
older girl who had spoken to her. They stopped and glanced around.
“Hey,” the older girl greeted her with a smile. “Welcome to
TLS-1.”

The six-week space flight had been horrible.
There’d been nothing to do but listen to boring recorded lectures
talking about how wonderful the new government would be and what
her place would be in it. There were half a dozen of the recorded
sessions and with six weeks of travel, all of the children on the
transport had to endure them multiple times.

She’d learned a few useful things too, like
her home for the next several years would be a space station called
TLS-1. TLS, the Learning Station, was a failed attempt ages ago by
Earthlings to create a habitat in space. It was perfectly
habitable; the problem was the lack of organization and structure
in the people who tried to run it. The new government, voted into
place as an emergency measure to protect humanity from destroying
itself, had repurposed it. And now it was her home for the
foreseeable future.

“I’m Palla,” the older girl said and thrust
her hand forward. “This is Trix and that’s Kami.”

“I’m Lily,” she said and then blushed. They
already knew that thanks to their teacher introducing her to the
class. “Sorry, you knew that.”