Under Vanishing Skies (33 page)

The roof hatch opened. They must have rappelled onto the roof.  I hadn't considered that possibility.

A moment later, two men in MDF uniforms came down the ladder. I knew the first one in an instant. He had a bandage around his left hand and a giant, curved sword in his belt. It was Pun. He jumped off the ladder, turned, and pulled a pistol from his holster. He pointed it directly at me and motioned for me to put my hands in the air, but I held on to my side with both hands. The pain had reached a new leve. I doubled over.

I heard the second guy jump off the ladder. I looked up. He clumsily slid the rifle off his shoulder before rushing over to the guy sprawled out over the server. He checked for a pulse and then shook his head at Pun.

“
Open the lower hatch,” Pun said to the guy. He got up and went over to the hatch. He opened it using the manual override handle. Then he stood at attention next to the hatch as Viyaja climbed up into the data center. A technician that I vaguely remembered followed him into the room.

“
You have caused quite a stir, Aron,” Viyaja said wiping the dust off his shirt. “But you are too late. The ship’s captain has already accepted the list from the Council.” He walked over to Pun. “And this stunt will just be seen as the desperate act of a delusional man. A man who was killed by the MDF as they tried to apprehend him.”

Viyaja’s smile triggered something deep inside of me. Despite the pain, I rushed towards him.

Pun hit me on the side of the head with the butt of his pistol. I fell and darkness closed in. Somewhere in that darkness, I heard Viyaja say, “Do not kill him yet, you idiot. We need him.”

The darkness receded and I lifted my hand to my forehead. When I pulled it away, I saw that it was covered in blood. I rolled over and pushed myself up to a sitting position. Viyaja was watching the technician trying to unlock the console. 

I laughed.

“
What is so funny, Mr. Atherton.?” Viyaja asked.

“
Him,” I said, motioning at the technician. “He’s wasting his time.”

“
Why? He was trained by you.”

I laughed again, but the pain in my head cut the laughter short. “Yeah, I know. But I never taught him how to fix what I did to that server.”

Viyaja looked furious. Addressing the technician, Viyaja said, “Power down the servers.”

The technician looked pale. “But sir…that could cause a cascade failure.”

Waving his hand dismissively, Viyaja said, “I don’t care about the technical details. Just turn them off!”

I could tell that the technician wanted to explain what a cascade failure was. They would have to rebuild the entire network from scratch. He looked back and forth between Viyaja’s seething face and Pun’s impassive stare. Then, with his hands shaking, he began to power down the servers.

I checked my watch. The messages should have all been sent out by now.

A minute later, the technician looked over at Viyaja and said, “It is done.”

Viyaja called over to the guard and said, “Bring him here.”

The guard grabbed me by my bicep and hauled me up. From the puddle of blood on ground, I knew that it wouldn’t be long before I passed out.

The guard walked me over to Viyaja and held me there.

“
I am going to ask you a question,” Viyaja said. “If you answer it truthfully, I promise that my friend, Pun, will kill you quickly. But if you play games, then you will learn the meaning of real pain.”

Addressing Pun, he said, “Unleash your Khukuri.”

The Gurkha holstered his pistol and drew his sword. I stared at it and remembered how he had cut his own hand just to prove a point.

Viyaja stared at me. “So, Mr. Atherton, where is your friend’s data mat?”

“
What friend?”

“
I told you. Do not play games with me. You know that I am talking about Jin.”

“
You’re too late, asshole. By now the data mat is in the hands of the ship’s captain.”

I looked at Pun and spit in his face. “Come on, Pun. Stop fucking around and kill me already. My head and side are really starting to hurt.”

“
He will kill you when I tell him to kill you.” Viyaja’s face was flushed and sweaty. “You!” He pointed to the guard. “Run to the hotel and find the boy. When you find the boy, kill him and bring the data mat to me.”

Eyes wide, the guard looked back and forth between Viyaja and Pun, but he didn’t move.

“
You fucking prick!” I yelled at Viyaja. “I’ll kill you if anything happens to that boy.” I took a step towards Viyaja, but Pun placed his sword in front of me like a crossing guard sign.

I glared at him and said, “I thought you said that you swore an oath to protect the people of the Maldives?”

He placed the point of his sword against my chest.

“
If you honor that oath, then why in the hell are you taking orders from him? He doesn’t care about the people. Look how easily he just ordered the death of a ten-year-old boy. He’d order the death of everyone in the Maldives if meant saving his own neck”

Pun’s face was a mask of stone, but there was something I saw in his eyes. What was it? Then it hit me. 

He didn’t know!

“
Why do you think he wants that data mat?” I pushed harder now. “I’ll tell you why...to cover his tracks. He doesn’t want anyone to find out how many people he's already killed.”

“
Shut up! The Gurkha has sworn an oath of loyalty to me.”

I watched as Pun turned his head and looked directly at Viyaja for the first time. I saw beads of sweat multiply on Viyaja’s forehead. He wiped them away with the back of his arm.

“
You will kill him now. That is an order!” Viyaja screamed.

Pun lifted his sword above his head and set his gaze back on me.

“
I can’t believe that you are taking orders from Viyaja after what he’s done to your people.”

His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“
Don’t ask me…ask him. Ask him who massacred everyone on Hanikada.”

Pun stared at Viyaja. 

“
He’s lying!” Viyaja shouted. “Don’t listen to him. He is trying to trick you.”

Pun studied Viyaja’s face.

Viyaja reached over and pulled the pistol out of the guard’s holster. He took a step back and placed the barrel against my temple. 

The room began to spin. I began to laugh again as I thought of how disappointed Viyaja would be when I died before he had a chance to kill me.

“
Stop laughing!” Viyaja yelled in a high-pitched tone. Then, addressing Pun, he said, “I order you to kill him. Kill him now!”

I closed my eyes, ready for it all to be over. I waited, but nothing happened. With my eyes still closed, I lifted my chin and pushed my chest out.

“
Just do it, Pun. For God’s sake, do it. You know he doesn’t have the balls to do his own dirty work.”

I heard the swish of the sword and felt the wind as it passed in front of my face. I opened my eyes and looked down, expecting to see my intestines falling out on to the floor. I saw a puddle of blood, but it wasn't mine.

“
I swore an oath to the people, not to you,” Pun said before pulling his sword out of Viyaja. Then I watched as Viyaja collapsed to the ground. Pun looked over at the guard. The guard released me and sprinted for the hatch. He was followed close behind by the technician.

That tunnel of blackness was closing in again. But before I passed out I saw Pun smile.

Chapter 21

Familiar voices pushed their way into my dream and battled for attention. But I didn’t want to wake up.

I was sitting in the backyard with Kelly.  We were watching the girls run around. Kelly touched my arm and I looked into her eyes. She was smiling, but a single tear rolled down her cheek. I tried to wipe it away, but my arms wouldn’t move. She said something, but I couldn't understand what she said because the other voices drowned her out.

“
What?” I asked.

 “
Wake up, Aron.” It wasn’t Kelly voice. 

Kelly, the girls, and the backyard began to fade way. I began to cry.

“
Come on. Wake up.”

My eyes felt like they were glued shut. After several attempts, I managed to open them, but I was assaulted by light and I shut them again.

“
That’s it, Aron. Open your eyes.”

I tried again and this time I managed to keep them open long enough to see Helen. She was smiling.

She turned and said, “He’s waking up, go get the doctor.”

I turned my head to see who she was talking to. It wasn’t easy moving my head. It felt like someone had tied a hundred-pound weight to it. I saw Mohamed just as he walked out of the room.

“
Aron dear, look at me. Can you hear me?”

I looked back at Helen and croaked out, “Yeah. I hear you.” Then I looked around the room and asked, “Where am I?”

The room looked like a hospital room or at least what I remembered a hospital room looking like. A monitor stood next to my bed and an IV bag hung suspended on a chrome pole. My eyes traced the clear tubing down from the bag to where it met a needle that disappeared into my arm.

“
You’re in the Male clinic, dear. You gave us all quite a scare.”

I’d been in the clinic before, but I didn’t recall seeing the monitoring equipment. It was clean and it actually seemed to work. They must have hidden it from us back when we were salvaging the electrical equipment to build the IICN.

“
I don’t understand,” I said.

“
So, our patient is awake is he?”

I looked toward the unfamiliar voice and saw a woman who had her hair pulled up tight into a ball, the old fashioned kind. But there wasn’t anything else old fashioned about her. I tried to guess her age, but gave up. She had one of those ageless faces. She could be anywhere from thirty five to fifty five. But her eyes looked older. They were the eyes of a person who had seen her fair share of pain and suffering.

She wore a clean, white jumpsuit. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen anything that clean or that white. Having once worked in the satellite industry, I had seen a lot of people in jumpsuits like that. However I never saw anyone who could fill it out the way she did. She was too...too something. I couldn’t put my finger on.

She walked over to the bed, looked at the monitor, and then pulled out a small pen light and held it in front of my eyes. “Try to follow the light with your eyes. Don’t move your head.”

Not moving my head wasn’t going to be a problem.

“
Good, good. Do you feel like you could sit up?”

I nodded. Mohamed came over and helped the woman elevate the head of the bed.

When they finished, I asked, “Who are you?”

“
I’m Dr. Belkin. I’m the senior physician on New Hope.”

“
New Hope?”

“
It’s the Mars colony ship,” Mohamed interjected. “They’ve brought a lot of medicine and other supplies.” Mohamed looked as excited as a kid on Christmas morning.

A million questions swirled inside my brain, but there was only one that mattered.

“
Where’s William! Is he alright?”

 “
Yes, yes,” Mohamed said. “The boy is fine. He is downstairs and very anxious to see you. He refused to leave the clinic, you know, and slept downstairs for the past two days.”

I took a deep breath as a surge of relief washed over me. “Thank God.”

“
Did the messages make it out? The ones we sent?”

 “
Yes,” Helen said. “Everyone got the messages. And let me tell you, people were pretty riled up. We almost had a full-scale revolution on our hands.”

“
That’s enough questions for now,” the doctor said. “There’ll be enough time to talk later. Right now I want to finish checking you out.”

She placed a hand on my forehead and I tried to knock it away, but the IV tube got in my way.

“
Take it easy. Don’t make me sedate you,” the doctor said with a disarming smile. “How does your head feel?”

“
Like a helojumper landed on it.”

 “
It should. You had quite a concussion. You’ll probably have a headache for the next few days, but you’ll be as good as new before you know it.”