Under Falling Skies Read online

  “So,” Ottilie said with exaggerated casualness. “Your daddy has had quite a lot to say recently. Likes to talk big, doesn’t he?” Scout didn’t know what she was referring to, but then Scout tuned out most political talk. In truth, any of it that didn’t mention the rebels she just let flow past her.

  “It’s complicated,” Ruth said shortly.

  “But you can’t say it’s not our business,” Ottilie said. “You’re stirring up a political shit storm. We’re all going to get swept up in it.”

  “I think I know a little bit more about that than you do,” Ruth said.

  “About war? I don’t think so,” Ottilie scoffed. “Because war? That’s where this whole mess is going to end.”

  “What are you worried about?” Ruth asked. “You’re too old to be conscripted again.”

  Ottilie’s hands curled into fists, but Ebba put her own hand on Ottilie’s forearm and left it there until she relaxed them.

  “Since we’re all trapped together inside this box,” Warrior said, “perhaps we should keep our conversation to neutral matters like the weather.”

  “Oh, the weather,” Ottilie said with a sharp laugh. “On this planet, nothing is more political than the weather.”

  Warrior clicked her tongue against the inside of her teeth. “Okay, I’ll give. How is the weather political?”

  “Not so much the weather,” Ebba said, “but storms like this one.”

  “Oh,” Scout said as the meaning dawned on her.

  “Explain, Scout,” Warrior said.

  “The magnetic shield that’s supposed to protect us from solar flares—it’s generated by satellites. Satellites in space,” Scout said. “Space, where Planet Dwellers never go. Where the Space Farers control everything.”

  “I see,” Warrior said. “Yes, that does sound political.”

  “It’s obviously more complicated than that,” Ruth said.

  “Obviously,” Warrior said. “It always is.”

  The rocking back and forth of the rover slowed to a stop and the engine cut off. Ebba turned and opened the hatch to the cockpit, Ottilie and Warrior following close behind as she climbed back up in the driver’s seat. “We’re there,” Ebba said, “but I don’t see a thing.”

  She and Ottilie looked at all the panels while Warrior looked through the narrow band of windows, slowly turning in a circle. Scout really wished there were other windows in the rover so she could see out as well. Ruth slid onto the bench across from Clementine, her back to Scout. Scout wondered what her story was. It’d been a few days since she’d been into a city for more than a minute, which wasn’t long enough to hear any news. Why would the governor’s daughter go missing? How had she ended up out in the middle of nowhere alone with her ward?

  “There,” Warrior said, pointing through one of the windows. “Do you see? There’s a little hill, and something in the side of the hill. See it?”

  “I’ll pull up closer,” Ebba said, bringing the engines back to life. She made little nudges on the controls, and the rover rolled slowly forward. Then they stopped once more.

  “Nice work,” Warrior said. “You lined that up perfectly with the door.”

  “Lined what up?” Scout asked as Warrior came back down the ladder.

  “Hard to say,” Warrior said. “Help me get into this suit.”

  “You only have two suits,” Ruth noted.

  “It’ll be enough,” Warrior said. “I’m going out alone first, to see what’s out there.”

  “You’re leaving us?” Ruth asked.

  “Of course not,” Warrior said. “In fact, I’ll be in contact with Scout the entire time.”

  “You will?” Scout said.

  “Yes,” Warrior said, taking something else off her belt and pressing it into Scout’s hands.

  “What’s this?” Scout asked. It looked like a pair of glasses, only when she put them on she couldn’t see a thing.

  “I’ll activate the link in a minute,” Warrior said as she pulled the suit up over her arms. “You’ll see what I see, and you’ll hear what I say. And vice versa.”

  “I was hoping for an opening big enough to just drive the rover right inside,” Ottilie said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Warrior said, zipping the suit up and reaching for the helmet. “It seemed logical, with the beacon and all. But it’s been a few years, sometimes things get buried by time.”

  “And if there’s nothing here but a beacon?” Ottilie asked.

  “We can worry about that when I get back,” Warrior said. “Step back from the door, the storm is more intense than before. I’ll be quick, be prepared to seal this after me very quickly.”

  “How are we going to get out of here one by one with the other suit? The last person to go is going to already be baked by all this opening and closing of the door,” Ruth said.

  “One thing at a time,” Warrior said, then signaled for Ottilie and Ebba to help her. They opened the door just enough for her to slip outside, then slammed it shut behind her.

  “Easy for her to say,” Ruth said bitterly. “She’s the one who is going to be wearing a suit the entire time, not us. And look at her. She probably has implants or nanites or something—none of this even hurts her.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Scout said. “If that were true, she wouldn’t be using a suit.” Although she too wondered. There was just something about Warrior that made you doubt she was entirely human.

  “Can you see anything?” Ottilie asked.

  Scout dropped the glasses back down over her eyes, keeping one arm around each dog. She didn’t like being blind to the room she was in, but she was scarcely going to turn down the trust that Warrior had just put in her. For a moment her vision was still black, then there was a crackling sound in her ears and a blinding light in her eyes.

  “Aah!” Scout cried but fought the urge to rip the glasses off her face.

  “Sorry about that,” Warrior said. “It’s a bit brighter out here than inside the rover.”

  “It must be nearly noon,” Scout said.

  “You’re getting my raw data feed,” Warrior said. “Sorry, I can’t adjust that.”

  “This isn’t what you see?”

  “I have some filters in place.”

  “To adjust for the sun?”

  “Among other things. For instance, someone is out here with me.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Scout said. Her eyes were adjusting to the bright light, but there was nothing around but dirt and scrubby grass. They had left the grainfields behind and were really out in the sticks now. She saw a small hill that Warrior was walking towards, only a few steps away, but no sign of a person.

  “There’s an opening in the hill,” Warrior said.

  “Where?”

  “It’s quite small.”

  Scout’s stomach gave a sickening lurch as Warrior suddenly dropped to the ground and began crawling forward. Scout saw Warrior’s gloved hands moving over reddish dirt as the dazzling brightness of the day gave way to the murky darkness of the hole she was crawling into.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Scout asked. “You just said there was a person in there. How do you know they’re friendly?”

  “Like I said, kid. We’re on the same mission here.”

  “Surviving the storm,” Scout said.

  “Exactly.”

  “What does she see?” Ottilie asked in a harsh whisper.

  “Nothing yet,” Scout said. She was looking at darkness, but it was darkness with a certain pattern to it. When Warrior got back to her feet, Scout could tell by the way the darkness swirled down.

  Then she was blinded again, but not by warm sunlight. This was a cold, artificial light. And someone was shining it deliberately right into Warrior’s eyes.

  7

  Scout had to shut her eyes against the onslaught of that light. She wondered what Warrior with her filtered vision could see. She waited for something to happen, for Warrior to move or speak or for the person down in
that hole with her to do something, but she heard nothing. She buried a hand in each of the dogs’ fur, that comforting gesture grounding her inside the rover she could no longer see.

  “Warrior?” she whispered when her patience at last gave out.

  “Hey, friend,” Warrior said, not to her.

  “Not sure you’re my friend,” someone said. The voice sounded distant in Scout’s ear, not as close as Warrior, but still clear. It was a hard voice but it had the same rich vowels of the Planet Dweller elite as Ruth spoke with.

  “Well, I’m not your enemy,” Warrior said. “You’re trying to get into that door? I want to get into that door too.”

  “Just looking for shelter from the storm?” the new woman asked, an edge of sarcasm to her voice.

  “Exactly. So why don’t you lower your light.”

  The light dropped away and Scout could finally see. The tunnel Warrior had crawled through had opened into a slightly larger space, still not big enough to fit a rover, but big enough to fit the six of them plus the two dogs plus this new woman. The walls were the same red dirt Warrior had just crawled through, and the open space was narrow but twisted in a gradual arc, widening at about shoulder level, then closing up again. A few scraggly grass roots hung down from the low ceiling, dried out and dead-looking.

  But at the back of the space was a metal wall, and in the center of the wall was a door. Scout guessed this was the entrance to something hidden deeper underground, some building meant to be topside, no bigger than an outhouse, that had over the years been buried by the blowing red dirt, packed down by hard rains and baked in the sun. It brought to mind movies she had seen from Old Earth, lost civilizations rediscovered after endless centuries, only no one had been on this planet earlier than a dozen decades ago. And even if it was some long-lost structure, what was this woman doing here?

  Warrior was walking toward the woman, but slowly, giving Scout lots of time to look her over. She was in a hover chair, an expensive model, all sleek curves of chrome if a bit scuffed and dirty, much like the woman. She was dressed like Ruth in a certain careless elegance, her long black hair pulled back and tied tight at her nape, the end pulled forward to drape over one shoulder. The style was reminiscent of Ebba’s, but she definitely wasn’t a Space Farer, not with that healthy glow to her rich brown skin. She would have looked like a prosperous Planet Dweller businesswoman if not for the red dirt all over her. Her hands were caked with it, a few of her carefully manicured nails broken, and she had long streaks of dirt down her front.

  There was no way to ride a hover chair into this space, not even her model built like a pod that curved around the front up to her waist. She must be sitting cross-legged under the curving panel, if she had legs at all. She must have barely gotten the chair through the tunnel by sending it through empty, then programming it to make the journey on its own as she pulled herself down after it.

  But how had she gotten out here in the first place?

  “I can help with that,” Warrior said, nodding to the pry bar the woman had left wedged between door and doorframe before Warrior had interrupted her. The area of the door and frame around the bar had many deep scratches, as if it’d taken her many tries to find purchase. “I think I’d have more leverage.”

  “I’m stronger than I look,” the woman said.

  “I don’t doubt that,” Warrior said, “but you’re trying to force the locking mechanism halfway up the door. It’s a little awkward to do from your chair.”

  “What’s happening?” Ottilie hissed at Scout.

  “There is a door, and a woman trying to open the door, a woman in a hover chair,” Scout reported.

  “A hover chair,” Ottilie repeated. “Here. Beyond the edge of civilization. In a hover chair.”

  “Well, yeah,” Scout said. “She only looks a little bit younger than you. Maybe she was hurt in the war?”

  “Many were,” Ebba said, “but the wounded from both sides, the badly wounded, the paralyzed, they all went up into space.”

  “Maybe not all,” Scout said. “Surely it wasn’t mandatory.”

  “Scout,” Warrior said, her voice only slightly showing the strain as she pushed on the pry bar.

  “Yes?”

  “Get the little girl in the suit first. Send her out to me. She’ll find the hole in the hill. It’s going to take a while to get this door open, and we need to get you all in faster than that.”

  “Got it.” Scout pushed the glasses back on top of her head. “She wants us to come to her. She said send the girl first.”

  “And then what?” Ottilie asked.

  “I’ll send her back with my suit,” Warrior said, as if she could hear what they were saying. “Each of you will come, take a suit back, then come back to the hole and take your suit off for the next person. Sound like a plan?”

  “Got it,” Scout said, then repeated it to the others.

  Ebba and Ottilie helped Clementine into the suit, using a belt to pull up the extra fabric so she wouldn’t trip.

  “Straight out from the door, you’ll find a little hill, and there’s a hole in the ground at the bottom of the hill. Climb into the hole,” Scout said.

  Clementine nodded. Then Ebba and Ottilie opened the door just long enough to push her outside.

  “Ruth, you’re next,” Scout said. “Then either of you two. I’ll go last.”

  She was afraid they were going to ask her why, but they just nodded gravely. Perhaps they guessed. Scout hugged her dogs tighter. Now that Clementine had gone, they were both in much better spirits. Girl thumped her tail loudly against the wall of the rover, and Shadow licked at her chin.

  “We should pack,” Ebba said, and Ottilie nodded. Ebba pulled two enormous bags from the same cabinet she had stored the suits in and she and Ottilie went to the kitchenette and started emptying their food stores into the two bags.

  Scout dropped the glasses back down over her eyes, but there wasn’t much to see. Warrior was leaning over the pry bar, pushing with all her might. The woman in the hover chair was at the corner of her field of vision, hands clasped nervously as she watched Warrior work.

  “I don’t suppose you asked where she came from?” Scout asked.

  “You suppose correctly,” Warrior said. “Plenty of time for questions . . . once we’re on the other side of this door.” She had taken off the suit before starting on the pry bar, and it was lying on the ground near the woman in the hover chair. Scout could just see as Clementine emerged from the tunnel, snatched up the suit, and disappeared out of Warrior’s vision again.

  “She’s coming,” she said to the others. A moment later there was a muffled knock at the door and Ebba and Ottilie pushed it open just long enough to pull her inside.

  “Did you get a name anyway?” Scout asked.

  Warrior made a sound somewhere between a groan and a chuckle. “So, got a name?”

  “Oh, are you talking to me this time?” the woman in the hover chair asked primly.

  “Yeah,” Warrior asked before leaning back into the pry bar.

  “Call me Liv.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Liv,” Warrior said, the last few words lost in a loud grunt as she strained at the bar.

  “I’ll reserve judgment before saying the same,” Liv said.

  “Suit yourself,” Warrior said.

  “Ready,” Ruth said and Scout lifted the glasses to watch Ruth and Clementine disappear into the light.

  “How much are we being exposed to?” Ebba asked Ottilie in a low voice.

  “Does it matter?” Ottilie asked offhandedly, but then added, “A lot. Maybe too much for the little ones.”

  “If the beacon is part of an original colonial shelter, they might have radiation meds.”

  “Still? And would they still be any good?”

  Scout tried to tune them out. They weren’t saying anything she hadn’t already been thinking, only she wasn’t so much worried about herself.

  Ruth returned with Clementine’s suit and waited
for Ebba to put it on. Warrior didn’t seem to be making any progress, but her strength wasn’t flagging yet either. Scout heard Ebba’s grunt as she slung one of the overloaded bags over her shoulder, then the clang as the door was shut behind her.

  “Do you have any explosives in here?” Scout lifted her glasses to ask Ottilie. “Something small, like a mining charge, to blow the door?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ottilie said, but then her face lit up and she turned to look at the mess around the table. There wasn’t much else to do while she waited for Ebba to return with Ruth’s suit. She was engrossed in digging through a tote when Ebba knocked, so Scout got off the bunk to push open the door.

  “I just need a second,” Ottilie said, gathering what seemed like far too many bits of junk into her bag.

  “Oh, I’ve got it,” Ebba said. “Get dressed, I’ll get your bag ready.”

  “You know what I’m thinking?”

  “Of course I do, dear,” Ebba said, the fondness clear even through the speakers in Scout’s helmet.

  “I’ll be back for you next,” Ottilie said to Scout, who just gave a nod. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  Scout folded up the glasses and put them in her shirt pocket, then leaned down to gather Shadow close in her arms, sparing a hand to touch Girl’s head. It seemed to take a lot longer for Ottilie to return. Perhaps that was a kindness.

  Finally, there was a knock at the door, brisk and forceful, and she pushed it open, but when the suited figure turned and removed her helmet it was Warrior standing in front of her.

  “Ottilie had an idea,” Scout guessed.

  “Well, I wasn’t having much luck, so I said I’d come back for you and give her a shot at opening the door.” She handed Scout the spare suit and Scout slowly began to put it on.

  Then Warrior took off her own suit.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?” Warrior asked.

  “You can’t stay here.”

  “Why would I do that? It’s not far from here to the hole. I’ll be fine. I won’t go into the specifics on that, but you can trust me. I can take it. Your dogs, on the other hand . . .”