The Apocalypse Ocean (10 page)

“There’s no rescue team,” the pilot told Kay. “Nezzy’s going apeshit up there, doing their best to keep us bottled up in the stratosphere.”

She pulled out a bag of supplies from inside the destroyed craft. She moved with an easy confidence. Sure, she’d been shot out of the sky, but now her body language seemed to indicate that this was just an annoying setback.

“I don’t understand. Who is Nezzy?” Kay asked.

“Nesaru,” the pilot said. “The alien bird fucks.”

Kay was shocked at the irreverence. “The Lords?”

The pilot paused rummaging around in her bag. “Lords? Is that what you call them?”

Kay grimaced. With a curled lip she said, “That is what they demand we call them. They rule this world. They rule us.” The words frightened her, but she realized their truth.

“But not you,” the pilot noted. “You’re out here.”

“I ran,” Kay said. “They killed everyone else. So I ran.”

The pilot’s head snapped up at that. “Killed
everyone
?”

“They dug a pit,” Kay said.

“Hiding the evidence,” the pilot muttered, moving slowly. “They claim they’re not breeding and using humans for cheap labor to replace their collapsing economies. Means they’re realizing they’re about to lose, and they’re trying to hide the evidence. Fucking Nezzies.”

“They’re losing?” Kay looked up at the sky.

“Yep,” the pilot said with an enthusiastic grimace as she hefted her bag onto her back. “We have secure ground positions three hundred miles north of here protected by an orbital defense platform. We’re wrapping up the orbital campaign, now it’s the down and dirty groundside operations. We could have just nuked the place from orbit if it was only Nesaru, but everyone out there is doing their best to try and liberate as many fellow humans as we can.”

“You’re here to free us?” Kay asked.

The pilot held out a clear water bottle. Kay blinked. The water softly sloshed back and forth, captivating her.

Her hand shook as she opened it.

“Take sips,” the pilot ordered. “You look dangerously dehydrated. Do it all at once, you’ll just throw it back up.”

Kay took three careful sips and handed it back.

The pilot looked impressed at her discipline. As Kay intended.

“What is your name, little girl?” the pilot asked.

“My name?” Kay rubbed her lips with her fingers, peeling tissue free.

“What do I call you? My name is Avris Jake. You can just call me Avris,” the pilot said.

Kay thought for a moment. “When people need me, they know I’m the third child of room K, of the Caretakers hut. That is all they need.”

The pilot, Avris, looked at her. “I’ll just call you Kay, then, shall I?”

Kay looked around. “You can call me anything you wish, Avris, there is no one else here.”

“Well, Kay, since I assume you’re on the run, do you want to join me on my trek back to safety?”

#

There was a lot to learn.

There were forty-eight other worlds, and many interesting waypoints in between. There were many races, aliens, and humans. And humans had once lived on a distant world by themselves, but had been ripped from it.

Kay learned about the wormholes that connected all these worlds, magical portals that starships slipped through to instantly cross vast distances.

“There was one in orbit above Okur, this world, high up in the sky,” Avris told her as they walked at night, the continuing battle of lights raging overhead. “That’s where we came in from.”

“Was?”

“We pulled it out of the sky and landed it,” Avris said. “After we established the high ground. Now we’re vomiting a land war up onto the continent and trying to snag the skies away from the Nezzies. We’re chaining all the worlds together, so that you can just sail from one to another. One giant, massive ocean of the worlds.”

“And the Lords, they don’t rule it all?”

“They don’t rule shit,” Avris said. “All the aliens, the not-humans, used to rule us. The Satraps ruled the aliens, and all the forty-eight worlds used to be under the Satrapy. But we rose up. And we’re breaking their hold. Your world, Okur? One of the last alien-ruled strongholds. Nezzies thought if they could pack enough armor in front of the wormhole and never come back out, they could hunker down here and do whatever they wanted.”

The worlds out beyond Okur were different. People ran their own affairs. Were powerful.

Kay had a lot of time to mull that over.

#

A large flying machine found them after four days, following a signal from Avris. The massive engines on finger-like wings kicked up sand and blinded Kay, but Avris tugged her along inside.

They watched from the windows as they flew over the nighttime landscape.

“Keeping low and fast,” one of the helmeted crew said. “Still have Nezzy Interceptors trying to harass us out on the fringe.”

Dunes whipped by, but after an hour the landscape began to change.

Kay watched, glued to the window, as trees and green life slowly appeared. It seemed a dream in the bright moonlight. It was like they were flying into the world’s biggest garden at night, she thought, as more and more plants filled the sand.

And then the sand faded away to a deep green that overwhelmed her.

The trees. Everywhere. High enough that they sometimes slapped the bottom of the craft.

Then came what she knew were cities. Buildings clustered tight together. Hundreds of them lit up and scattered in between the green, connected by dark strips.

And then thousands of buildings. Some of them rose higher than a mountain, she realized. And many of them were burning and blackened. War had come to this landscape.

The vehicle climbed higher into the air, and Kay saw a great wide band of black appear where the houses, even the land, ended. It was like there was another desert out there.

She realized what it was as they flew over, moonlight reflecting off the blackness.

It was water.

Then they changed course and flew along the land’s edge until they reached a small island crammed with structures, lit up so brightly it made no sense to Kay. With a few bumps and shakes the vehicle dropped out of the sky to land, quite gently, on the beach.

Four men in grey clothes hurried over to the opened door.

“Come on,” Avris told Kay with an outreached hand.

Kay didn’t move.

“No,” she said, looking at the men.

She could tell those men were waiting for her, not Avris.

Avris cocked her head. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re going to leave me here,” Kay said calmly.

“I have to. My orders are to come in for debriefing, then I’ll be back up in the air, fighting.”

“I want to fight as well,” Kay explained.

“Sweetheart, you’re, what, twelve, thirteen?” Avris squatted down in front of her. “You’re simply too young.”

“I’ve killed one of them, already. I know a lot about the Lords,” Kay said. “I can kill more. I know I can. Please let me work for you.”

She wasn’t in full control of this situation, she could tell. She’d been around Avris long enough, but those uniformed men outside looked bored. Kay was scared. She was breathing fast, her pulse racing.

Not in control.

“How old do I have to be to fight,” Kay asked.

“Eighteen,” Avris said.

“That’s too long.” Kay looked over Avris’s shoulder. “That’s too long.”

Kay didn’t want to lose the only person in the universe she knew.

“Look.” Avris reached around her neck and pulled off a silver necklace with small tags on them. Kay didn’t recognize the glyphs etched into silvery flat tags. “These are my tags. They have all my info on them. If you ever need to contact me, if you ever need to ask for help, or just want to keep in touch, these will help you find me.”

She slipped them over Kay’s neck.

Kay didn’t cry when they made her leave the vehicle. But it was an option.

It wouldn’t have been hard.

#

“We’ve only been up and running for a week,” one of the blandly uniformed men explained. “But we have made accommodations and the facilities will probably be nicer than what you are used to. The dorms are very nice.”

A curved road led them away from the beach. Kay forced herself to remain calm as she heard the craft take off. It flew overhead, screaming off toward wherever it was Avris would be reporting to.

The road turned and they walked into a small town of those strangely high buildings, all lit up so very brightly. It didn’t feel like late into the night out here.

There were even tall lamps along the side of the street.

A handful of Runners lounged around the steps leading into these buildings, eyeing her. Strange to see them out after curfew hours, but then they were all free of the Lords, weren’t they? Why shouldn’t they be out, Kay thought.

They stared at her.

One of the Runners whistled. It was picked up by other Runners up and down the street. Some sort of high-pitched code.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose.

A few Ox-men opened doors and looked out. Windows cracked. More Runners appeared, their long legs and thick thighs visible even under the gray garments it appeared everyone here wore.

Ox-men and Runners began to walk behind them, still saying nothing. Even the four men with her began to look concerned, glancing back and frowning.

“You should run,” Kay whispered to the nearest man. “They’ve come to kill me.”

She hadn’t understood the rage on their faces at first. If she had, she would have turned and run the moment she saw the Runners.

They knew what she was. And she hadn’t thought of herself as their enemy. But then, who thinks of themselves as the enemy, ever?

“Caretaker,” someone whispered behind her.

“Caretaker.” The word was picked up by people on the other side of the street, and passed around, murmured all over.

There was still fear in there. But it hardly held back the pent up rage in their voices.

A Runner burst through the group around her and grabbed her right hand. He held it up into the air where they could all see the pale skin and the mark where the Fist had once ended by her wrist.

Howls of outrage washed over the street.

One of the uniformed men pulled out a gun and fired it into the air. “Stay back!” he shouted.

Three Ox-men lumbered forward and threw him aside like the nuisance he was to them. The gun skittered across the street.

There was nowhere to run. Kay stood and waited as a crowd of Runners and Ox-men closed in.

She’d crossed the desert, escaped execution, just to die here at the hands of her own people.

The first hairy punch to her face destroyed everything. The world disappeared in a shocking impact that left nothing behind it. She didn’t feel the kicks, the broken arm, pelvis, or collarbone. She was nothing more than a broken doll being thrown around on the sidewalk.

When she could walk again they assigned several armed guards to her. Her life narrowed to a single opulent room at the top of a dorm. She was allowed to walk the corridor under guard, but nothing more.

From the balcony she could look out over the entire island.

At night she watched the lights in the sky.

She sat in the sun until her right hand no longer bore the visible marks of her Fist, and as she did that she watched large clumps of children meander out toward the schools at the center of the island.

People checked in on her. Professional uniform types. But they couldn’t keep the disgust off their faces, and the painkillers left Kay in a haze. She just wanted to sleep.

She was the only Caretaker here, and they weren’t sure what to do with her.

What future did she have in a world where everyone she met wished her dead?

Apparently the administrators of the refugee camp wondered the same thing. They sat with her in a white room in the second month and handed her a tablet.

“We are transferring you off world to another camp that will process you,” a woman with her hair tied tight in a bun explained. “It will be safer for you to leave Okur. Considering what … you are.”

She could see that they meant well. So she signed the documents.

“There’s a ship headed for Tsushima, and we booked a cabin aboard for you. A soldier will chaperone you to the new camp. There will be someone waiting at the docks for you.”

“When do I leave?”

“Within the hour,” they told her. “Last night one of our guards was hurt when three Ox-men tried to force their way onto your floor. “You’re just not safe here.”

She had nothing to pack besides the clothes they’d given her. She was ready in five minutes. Ten soldiers escorted her into an armored vehicle, which roared through the camp streets to the dock.

A ship with large rust patches on its hull waited at the docks. The cabins perched at the front, three stories high. The ship’s flattened back was stacked with faded red and blue containers, all of them shackled down to the metal decks.

Inside her small cabin she sat on the bunk bed and stared at the white bulkhead until the ship’s engines shook the floor underfoot. The whole room rolled and pitched as they motored out to sea.

Kay took her painkillers and lay down.

#

They gave her books, but she couldn’t read. All the glyphs on paper made no sense to her. She couldn’t operate the tablets or screens, so she left them alone.

The drugs made it hard to focus, so she stayed in the room. It was safe in there.

Once or twice a day the ship would slow down and enter calm waters. An alarm sounded, then her stomach would flip, as if ripped inside out. Then they headed back out to sea. Sometimes the ship docked, unloaded containers, and took on new ones.

She should go outside, Kay thought. She should see these new worlds.

But it was too much. Too much haziness. Too much to process. She slipped out for one meal every day among the noisy, unshaven crew who left her alone.

That was the first seven days.

The second week one of the crew knocked on her door. Kay cracked it open slightly.

“Your soldier’s gone,” he informed her.

“Gone?” Kay repeated.

“I think they call it AWOL. Or maybe just desertion. He’s run away.”

“Oh. What should I do?”

The sailor shrugged.

Kay stopped taking her painkillers. She needed to watch the crew. Needed to read them.

She was alone again.

#

They woke her up early in the third week, rapping the steel door.

“End of the line,” they told her.

“This is Tsushima?” she asked. But she saw the look on their faces. It wasn’t Tsushima.

“Here’s the thing,” the captain explained to her. “We’re not going to Tsushima. We’re taking cargo here, and turning back for Okur.”

“But that’s not where I’m supposed to go,” Kay said, a note of terror creeping into her voice despite her attempt to control it.

One of the crew gave her a stack of paper. “This is enough money to set you up very nicely here. It’s what we were paid to take you all the way.”

“You can’t leave me here.” Kay stopped at the door leading out. “You can’t do this.”

They looked somewhat ashamed, but implacable. “There’s no profit in heading all the way to Tsushima. It’ll add weeks, when we can turn around and go right back for Okur where they need supplies for the liberation. Besides, there are plenty of your kind here. We’re not the first to turn around here.”

“Besides, with that cash you’ll live well in this place.”

My kind? Kay thought. What kind?

They dragged her out of the cabins and onto the deck. She struggled, but there were five of them, and they were strong and used to dealing with the chains that held the containers to the decks.

They pulled her down the ramp and onto the dock.

She tried to run back onto the ramp, but the captain struck her with the palm of his hand, dizzying her.

Kay sat down, catching her breath. She held onto the money and her bag of clothes, watching as the ramp rose into the air.

Within five minutes they had cast off, motors rumbling and churning the water. Kay sat and watched the ship get smaller and smaller as it headed for the horizon.

When it disappeared, she turned around and looked at the mountainous island in front of her. People bustled around the harbor and other ships unloaded their cargo, though all the docks seemed ridiculously long.

Alarms sounded. Loud wailing that echoed off the sides the mountains and down through the clustered, random buildings of the harbor.

A shiny mist rolled down the mountainside.

People hurried inside as Kay stood and watched.

She wondered what the rain would be like here. There wasn’t much of it on Okur. She’d remained hidden in her room for this entire trip. This would be the first world outside Okur she’d experienced.

Curious, Kay raised her arms.

Drops struck her skin and sizzled.

She jerked back and covered her face as the searing mist settled in over the harbor.

Needles of liquid burned her skin and sliced through her clothes. Mist spat and hissed as it hit the dock around her.

Kay leaned forward against the pain and screamed.

It wasn’t just the pain. It was something else deep inside. Betrayal, anger, it was full of unexpressed rage and sadness.

#

The man with the steel umbrella dragged at Kay, pulling her back across two years of memories. “Miss?”

She slid under the umbrella he offered, coming to her senses, and followed him onto the ship.

Minutes later the parasail shot up and caught the wind. Kay sat on the protected rear deck and watched the harbor as they sailed away.

THIS ISLAND IS MINE, NOT YOURS. She thought about the Doaq’s words again.

“Fuck you,” she whispered, and turned her back to Placa del Fuego.