Under Falling Skies Read online

  Scout felt tears spring to her eyes but blinked them back hard. She felt compelled to point out, “Just one of them is mine. Technically.”

  “Technically,” Warrior said, the corner of her mouth quirking again. “No one gets left behind, kid. But you’re going to have to help me get them inside. I don’t think they’re going to understand or enjoy what’s about to happen to them.”

  “True enough,” Scout said. Girl went into the bottom of the suit amiably enough, but Shadow had no desire to be thrust inside on top of her. Scout had to stop trying to be gentle and just hold him down until everything was zipped up and sealed. Then Warrior tied the arms and legs together to make a sling that crossed her body.

  “I’ll go first, since I’m going to want to run. You follow after.”

  “Got it,” Scout said.

  The door was opened to the noonday light once more, although the suit’s helmet instantly adjusted and Scout could see clearly. She stood transfixed for a moment. The sky above her was crisscrossed with streaks, fading away as quickly as they formed but new ones always forming everywhere. She had never seen so many. It was like the sky was made of eggshell, a rapidly shattering eggshell.

  When she looked down again, she found that Warrior and the dogs had already crawled down the tunnel to the space below. How long had she been standing there, just gaping at the sky? Scout dropped down to her hands and knees to follow. When she got to the end of the tunnel she started to get to her feet. She heard a clamor of voices, but only dimly, and she realized her helmet’s external mic was off.

  Still on one knee, she heard a faint boom and looked up to see a wall of sand rushing toward her. Then she was blasted backwards, hitting the packed dirt over the tunnel entrance and tumbling to the ground.

  8

  Scout was sprawled out flat on her back, watching the dirt settle around her as she fought to catch her breath. Someone was shining Liv’s light around, making the dust motes flash like stars. Or was Scout just thinking she saw stars? They danced around her, sparkling as they swooped along air currents that cycloned around the room, unable to find an escape. How badly had she hit her head? She tried not to remember the day she’d been blown off her bike. She had taken much more of a tumble that day. Surely she wasn’t seriously hurt now, but she was reluctant to try moving too soon. Then faces clustered around her and hands reached for the seal of her helmet.

  “Did you break anything?” Ottilie asked, sounding annoyed.

  Scout, still not able to draw a proper breath, just shook her head.

  “I thought you were right behind me,” Warrior said.

  “You would’ve had time to get to cover if you’d been right behind her,” Ottilie said.

  “. . . ’m okay,” Scout said, struggling to get up on her elbows.

  “Are you sure?” Warrior asked.

  Scout nodded. “How are the dogs?” she asked.

  “I suppose I should let them out,” Warrior said, setting the helmet down and disappearing in the clouds of dust.

  “You blew the door?” she asked Ottilie.

  “On the first try.”

  “What’s on the other side?” Scout asked.

  “Get up and let’s go see,” Ottilie said. She extended a hand and Scout took it, letting herself be pulled to her feet. She was sore all over but not really hurt. Liv in her hover chair had already moved closer to the doorway and was shining her light within, but beyond was only darkness.

  “It goes down,” Liv said. “I can’t tell how far.”

  “Down is good,” Ebba said. “Down is safer.”

  “You were already here,” Scout said to Liv. “Do you know what this place is?”

  “I followed the beacon, same as you,” Liv said, waving her hand over a display panel built into the arm of her hover chair, a map with a flashing light in the center.

  “That’s a nice chair,” Scout said, bending to examine the small panels and controls clustered on both chair arms.

  “It’s one of the newer models,” Ruth said. “Very expensive. Rare.”

  “I was on a waiting list,” Liv said. “My last chair was far more rudimentary.” She slapped one of her rock-hard biceps to be sure they knew just how rudimentary she meant.

  “You must work for the government if you got on that list,” Ruth said, narrowing her eyes as if squinting at Liv’s face might make it more familiar to her.

  Then Shadow gave a joyous bark as Warrior let him out of the suit. He charged over to jump on Scout and she bent to take his head in both her hands and rub his ears the way he liked. Girl soon joined them, calmer but with her tail wagging hard enough to thump loudly against the wall of the cavern, sending more clouds of dust into the already thick air.

  “What else is in your bag?” Ruth asked Ebba.

  “Freeze-dried food,” Ebba said. “I couldn’t bring any water—I didn’t have a large enough container for carrying it—but I guess we can go back if we need to.”

  “There must’ve been something,” Ruth said. “We’re going to need water more than we’ll need food.”

  “Ebba is right,” Warrior said. “We can always go back, but for now we should explore this tunnel. It’s possible we won’t even need the rover’s water.” She folded up the spare suit and handed it to Ebba, who tucked it into her bag. “Shall we?”

  “Maybe Scout should go first. Her and the dogs,” Ottilie said.

  Scout wasn’t afraid of caves or the dark or the unknown, and neither was Shadow. They had poked through many a hidey-hole together while waiting out storms or midday heat up in the hills. This wasn’t so different.

  And there was always the chance that this was another rebel hideout. Maybe this was the day she would finally meet them face-to-face.

  “Scout and I will lead with the dogs,” Warrior said. “Ruth, you come behind a bit with Clementine. Ottilie and Ebba, you bring up the rear. Keep an eye on our six, no reason not to be cautious. Liv, where should we put you?”

  “I can take care of myself,” she said, drawing herself up taller in her hover chair.

  “No doubt,” Warrior said. “You got out here somehow. I didn’t see another vehicle out there, and I could see for kilometers. I’m not asking for an explanation, just making an observation.”

  “I’ll stay in the middle, with the little one,” Liv said, looking at the ever-silent Clementine. Clementine was standing close to Ruth, half using Ruth as a shield as everyone was suddenly looking at her. But there was no fear or shyness in her eyes.

  Scout called the dogs to her as Warrior pushed the dangling door a little further open. Shadow trotted on ahead, not bothered by the dark, but Girl stayed close to Scout’s side. Warrior took a light of her own off her belt and shone it down the tunnel. It wasn’t as bright as Liv’s, but it would do.

  The cyclone of red dirt formed by the explosion in the arc-shaped cavern had bounced back through the now-open door. Some of the red dirt had settled to the floor but some still hung in the air. Stone floor, stone walls, stone ceiling, all squared off in the telltale signs of the colonizers’ mining machines. Shadow walked at the very edge of Warrior’s light, looking back from time to time to make sure they were all still following him. They walked in silence, the only sounds the echoes of their footfalls and the soft hum from Liv’s hover chair.

  Suddenly Shadow charged ahead, and Girl ran after him.

  “Dogs!” Scout started to yell, but Warrior put a hand on her arm and shook her head.

  “There could be trouble,” Scout said in a hissing whisper.

  “Yes, and I don’t want to run into it. Trust their instincts; they’ll retreat if they need to,” Warrior said. She brushed the edges of her shirt back from her hips but didn’t draw her gun. She did quicken her pace, though, and Scout did as well. She could hear the dogs in the darkness ahead, the snuffle of their breath as they followed scent trails, the click of their nails as they broke into another run.

  Then something crashed, as if one of the dogs had kn
ocked several things over at once, followed by a string of human curses. There was another crash, then a smaller one, more like a thrown object, and one of the dogs yelped. Again, Warrior put a restraining hand on Scout’s arm to keep her from rushing ahead.

  “I know somebody’s there,” the curser said. “Those dogs didn’t let themselves in.”

  “You’re right,” Warrior said, and at the edge of her light they could see the tunnel end in a steep flight of stairs spiraling down. There was no sign of the dogs. “Don’t be startled, we’re just travelers in need of a place to wait out the storm.”

  “Find another place,” the woman yelled back. “Mine’s not open.”

  Warrior, keeping her hands near her hips but in a nonobvious way, went first down the stairs. “If you live here you well know there is no other place.”

  “Not my problem. I’m not looking for company.”

  Scout followed Warrior down the stairs. The stairs made a complete circle as they descended, and Warrior’s form became a silhouette as the light from her flashlight was swallowed up by a brighter light coming from the bottom of the stairs. Warrior switched off her light and put it back on her belt.

  “I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement for the inconvenience,” Warrior said as she walked into the light.

  Scout glanced back at the others, who had stopped halfway down the stairs. Ruth pulled Clementine closer to her. Ebba was holding her bag open to let Ottilie quietly dig through it. Ottilie was engrossed but Ebba raised her chin at Scout, then tipped her head to suggest she should keep going down the tunnel. Scout nodded back. Perhaps it would be best not to all go in at once, not if this woman was as jumpy as she sounded. But she had to go; she had to find her dogs.

  Slowly she followed the last turn.

  All she could see was the silhouette of Warrior, hands near her hips but not awkwardly so, standing several meters from Scout. Small, flat silver packages were scattered across the floor at Warrior’s feet: food rations, likely as old as this station.

  “I’m not interested in an arrangement,” the still-unseen woman said. “That’s close enough.”

  “We can’t wait out the storm in the tunnel, we don’t have enough water,” Warrior said, still stepping forward into the light.

  “Like I said, not my problem.”

  Scout crept after Warrior, pausing to look down at the packages on the floor. Definitely food rations; she could see labels that read BEEF STROGANOFF and CHICKEN À LA KING.

  “Who’s lurking behind you?” the woman demanded, the beginnings of panic edging into her voice.

  “Just my friend, Scout. She’s harmless.”

  “But you’re not?”

  Warrior gave a little shrug. Scout took a few more steps past the spill of rations, stepping around the overturned crate they had fallen from, and out of the narrow tunnel into a larger space. The light was intensely bright, but it was coming from a single source in the center of the room’s ceiling. Scout shaded her eyes first with her hand and then with the brim of her hat.

  A woman of impressive girth stood with her feet planted wide apart, a rifle aimed at Warrior. Her dark skin had a grayish hue to it, as if she didn’t often get out into the sun. Her hair was a frizzy white cloud that floated all around her head. Her back was up against a table long enough to seat a dozen. A bottle of something amber-colored was near her elbow, a ring of condensate still marring the plastic tabletop molded to look like wood, but the glass that should be resting there was missing.

  “It’s just the two of you?” the woman asked, the end of her rifle wavering a bit.

  “And the dogs,” Warrior said.

  “I don’t like dogs,” she said in a low growl and groped for her missing glass. When she couldn’t find it she chanced a look back, swore under her breath, and took a swift pull from the bottle.

  “And also five others,” Warrior said.

  The woman sputtered as some of her drink went down the wrong pipe but kept the rifle up. “No. Too many.”

  “Don’t be silly. Look at this place.”

  She lifted her hands slightly, palms up, and Scout took her eyes off the woman to look around the room. It had an octagonal shape, the walls ahead and to the left and right each with a doorway in the center leading into darkness. The walls all around those doorways were covered in shelving, each shelf crammed to the max with crates and sacks of unknown contents, open tubs filled with hardware and small electronics, or tightly wrapped coils of rope. There was a generous blanket of dust over nearly everything, even the table and chairs in the center of the room under the light—everything except the area around one of the chairs where the woman now stood, and where her bottle waited for her.

  “Are you alone?” Scout asked. “So much space. How many more rooms?” She started to head to another doorway to see what lay beyond, but the woman moved her rifle from Warrior to Scout and Warrior put out a hand motioning for Scout to stop moving.

  “This storm is going to last for four days,” Warrior said to the woman.

  “I know. I have equipment,” she said testily.

  “We don’t have to get in your hair,” Warrior went on. “As long as we can have access to water and perhaps some sanitary facilities, we can otherwise keep to ourselves.”

  “You’ll be stealing my stuff,” she said.

  “Why would we want it? This stuff is ancient,” Scout said.

  “Have some respect,” the woman said.

  “We won’t touch your things,” Warrior said. “I will personally guarantee that. I will keep the others in line.”

  The woman lowered the rifle about halfway and bit her lip as she thought. Scout stood where Warrior had told her to stop moving, halfway between the doorway to the tunnel and the doorway to something else, something she couldn’t quite see, but she thought she heard a soft hum, like from a refrigeration unit. Could there be jolo here?

  The woman dropped the rifle to her side with a sigh. “I don’t suppose there’s much point in arguing. You have me outnumbered anyway, and I don’t intend to spend the next four days living under siege, fighting off looters.” She reached behind her and switched off the spotlight. Scout blinked for a moment or two before the now-dimmer room came back into focus.

  “Thank you,” Warrior said. “I’m Warrior. This is Scout.”

  “Viola,” the woman said and reached for her bottle again. She had it to her lips and was about to take another swallow when a long howl echoed from one of the darkened doorways and her gray complexion went even paler.

  “Tubbins!” she said.

  “Who’s Tubbins?” Warrior asked, but Scout was afraid she already knew the answer to that question.

  The skitter of dog claws across the stone floor grew louder, then Shadow came charging back into the room, running to Scout’s side. Girl lumbered after, encumbered by something in her mouth—a calico something curled in a tight ball, its back end clenched far too tightly in Girl’s massively strong jaws.

  She dropped it at Scout’s feet and moved back a bit to sit with her tail thumping loudly against the floor.

  The thing whimpered, then lifted its head to look up at Scout with imploring eyes. It tried to pull itself toward her, away from the still-tail-wagging Girl, but its back end dragged uselessly behind it.

  “Tubbins!” Viola shrieked, and before Scout even realized she had raised it again, the sound of the rifle discharging rent the air.

  9

  Scout had never been so close to a firing weapon before. Under the octagonal room’s cavernous ceiling, the echoing noise was painfully loud. Scout flinched, her whole body contracting into itself and her eyes closing. She stayed like that as the echoes died away. The plasma bolt must have struck somewhere quite close to her, the ozone filling her sinuses.

  The silence after the echoes faded was worse. She knew she hadn’t been shot, but she was afraid to open her eyes to look at her dogs. Shadow must be okay; he had been close beside her, and she was unharmed.


  And it had been Girl who had crushed Tubbins. Why had she done that? Such cruelty—was she really capable of that? She with her big eyes and dopey manner. She and Shadow had chased many a critter through the grainfields and had, she suspected, eaten more than a few when the pair were gone from her sight for too long. But a cat—surely a cat was a different thing? How could Girl not know the difference between prey and pet?

  All those nights with Shadow curled up against her belly, Girl had flopped down to sleep with her head on Scout’s ankle. She had been sleeping with a killer, a remorseless and cruel killer.

  Then she heard Viola swearing again and finally opened her eyes. Shadow was still standing close to her calf, and Girl still sat hovering over the cat, although she had stopped wagging her tail and looked nervous.

  “No deal. I want all of you out of here,” Viola said. Her rifle was on the floor at her feet and she was massaging one wrist as she glared at Warrior.

  “No need to be hasty,” Warrior said. “I can help your cat. Tubbins. But I’m going to need you to put that rifle away.”

  “Why?” Viola asked, barking out a laugh. “What did you do to me?”

  Scout was wondering the same thing. Viola kept massaging her wrist and glaring at Warrior. What had Warrior done to make her drop her rifle? And who had she been trying to shoot?

  “All the same,” Warrior said, “I’d feel better if that rifle were put away.”

  “So would we,” Ottilie said. She was at the doorway to the tunnel standing amid the scattered ration packets. She clutched something in her hand, something she kept out of sight. Ebba was close behind her, as were the others.

  “I don’t want you people here,” Viola said, but she seemed to find Warrior’s reflective lenses fixed on her just as unsettling as Scout did. She stopped massaging her wrist and picked up her rifle, holding it in the middle, nowhere near the trigger. She carried it across the room to where there was a sort of bar in front of one of the shelves. The bar was also of plastic molded to look like wood. When it was new it might have been more convincing, but the scratches and dings of long use were definitely not the splintering of wood. The chairs at the table and the tall stools at the bar were the usual cold, practical metal: no adornments, just the few spare lines it took to define a chair. They at least weren’t showing their age.