Dusk (42 page)

On the hologram, at that range, Cyrus could
see something dangling from the mining lev as the fighter slowed
behind it. It wasn’t until the small lozenge fell from the mining
lev and fired a spinning laser burst through the bottom of the
fighter that Cyrus realized the dangling form was most likely
Milliken. The fighter fell off the hologram, but another odd piece,
more shaft-like than lozenge-shaped, rose into view.

“Incoming!” Cyrus yelled, but the explosion
eclipsed his warning. The assault lev dipped right, and the entire
world spun around him. When it stopped, Cyrus was on the ceiling of
the assault lev. He looked up to see if Tanner was okay, but his
body was slumped awkwardly against the strap of the seat, which was
now, from Cyrus’s point-of-view, attached to the ceiling. As Cyrus
stood, it was hard for his eyes to register what he was seeing. The
back corner of the lev was twisted impossibly and there was a rip
in the back wall that defied understanding. As his cheeks began to
tickle and warmth began to rush back into his face, Cyrus realized
he was looking at the mining lev, upside down, its nose lights on
as it moved above them, or maybe beneath them.

Cyrus rushed to the controls of the assault
lev and tried to level the craft. Thankfully, Tanner was mumbling
incoherently; he was shell-shocked, but he was still breathing.
Cyrus slid across the roof of the lev as it slowly turned and then
stopped on its side. Something in the lev drive shook the vehicle
as it wheezed and sputtered. And then, just before the holomonitor
dissolved and the control panel spewed sparks over him, Cyrus saw
the altitude indicator running down too fast to read.

Cyrus jumped down to the side of the craft,
stepping across odd panels and compartments. Some panels leaked
miscellaneous fluids, and some burned from the inside. Cyrus
stepped over to the door and hit the emergency release. The door
separated with a pop and flew off into oblivion, and Cyrus again
had trouble interpreting the signal his eyes sent to his brain. As
he looked down through the doorway, he could see the doorway of the
mining lev with a spotlight from the inside streaming toward him.
Milliken was standing perpendicular to the doorway with something
tied to his waist. He motioned for Cyrus to come toward him, but
Cyrus shook his head and yelled over the howling wind, “I have to
get Tanner!” without realizing they were still connected by
radio.

It took some wrenching to get Tanner’s
harness to release, but when it did, Tanner fell right onto Cyrus’s
shoulder and he carried him over to the doorway. Tanner seemed to
be unconscious now, and Cyrus wondered how he would get him to the
mining lev, but when he reached the opening, his question was
already answered. Milliken was standing on the outside of his lev,
now only a few centimeters from the doorway, and Cyrus dropped
Tanner gingerly into Milliken’s grasp.

Milliken lowered Tanner into the mining lev
against the seat that rested in the middle. Cyrus wondered how hard
it would be to match the descent of the assault lev while flying
beneath it and still stay this close. And then, there was a sudden
thump against the now-bottom of the assault lev that knocked Cyrus
from his feet. “We got a problem!” Uzziah yelled through the
radio.

Cyrus looked up and noticed the laser’s
hologram was still active even though the controls of the craft
were dark. The laser’s hologram was floating about a meter and a
half above his head and it showed a fighter, most likely the
same
fighter, firing lasers into the sideways flying mining
craft beneath his own sideways flying assault lev. Cyrus could only
see a sliver of spotlight through the doorway now as sparks danced
across the doorway hole in the now-floor. “You better get over here
fast!” the radio reported as Cyrus hopped to his feet. He was about
to move to the doorway when he turned to the laser controls. The
fact that they were sideways barely registered in his mind. Cyrus
was floored by the image before him as the holographic ground
rushed up at the two levs, which were now a single blob in the
hologram.

Cyrus grabbed the left shoulder harness, pulled it
out as far as it would go, and wrapped it around the control stick
for the left laser. He yanked the tightening strap, and then,
without bothering to think about the distance, dove toward the
spotlight as the broken laser fired and tore through the center of
the assault lev itself. Cyrus twisted his body in the air and fell
toward the mining lev. But the wind caught him as he fell and he
felt his stomach leap into his throat. Then, miraculously he was
inside the mining lev, bouncing off something hard but padded, and
as the lev compartment spun around his airborne body, he was dumped
painfully onto his shoulders.

Uzziah was sweating inside his envirosuit and
it made the air he was breathing thick and humid. It had been hard
enough to match the descent of the smoking assault lev—sideways no
doubt—and to also maintain a proximity that allowed Cyrus to lower
the unconscious Tanner down to that crazy ass Milliken. But when
the fighter had rose up behind them again, Uzziah’s resolve
snapped, even before the laser had hit them. Luckily, Cyrus and
Milliken had not been outside of the tandem levs when they were
hit, but the hit shuddered the mining lev up into the falling tank.
He had yelled to hurry Cyrus, and had increased their descent to
open up the gap between the two levs, but they were running out of
sky fast, and Uzziah couldn’t imagine Milliken or Cyrus had anymore
tricks to throw at this persistent bastard that was chasing
them.

And then the imager showed the S-to-S laser
light up on top of the assault lev. The tank tipped and rolled
slightly in the air above them, and Uzziah heard an odd thump
inside the compartment followed by a moan that sounded like Cyrus.
Then, the line of the laser spread through the blip of the assault
lev and across the top of the pursuing fighter in the imager. The
fighter’s roof shaved off and flipped behind it, and then the
fighter dipped, rocked shakily, and, just as it seemed like it
would recover, a large chunk of the assault lev smashed into it.
The fighter was knocked into a dizzying spin and spiraled into the
ground as Uzziah cut the boosters and rolled back to level to avoid
hitting that same ground.

As Uzziah slowed to level the craft, the rest of the
assault lev came down in front of them. Uzziah’s instincts told him
to evade, but no one was belted in. He gritted his teeth and
activated the coring lasers, skirting little more than two meters
above ground. The assault lev hit the ground with the force of a
titan. The mounted S-to-S laser, still firing, cut a swath in the
ground dangerously close to them. Uzziah reacted, but he could not
take his focus from the tank that threw dirt and rocks into the air
as it appeared to roll toward them. Uzziah hit the throttle and
pulled back on the controls, pitching the nose upward as he prayed
his mining lasers would fire in time.The tank threw rent pieces
into the air and, just as Uzziah was about to pass over it, bounced
up off the ground. And as the coring lasers fired, Uzziah’s
training faltered, allowing innate human reaction to kick in. The
maelstrom of debris was too much, so he muttered another silent
prayer, let go of the controls, and closed his eyes.

There was a thump against the bottom of the
mining lev and when Uzziah’s eyes opened, there was nothing but
clear, starry sky before them. Milliken was checking Cyrus and
Tanner as he removed their helmets. Uzziah removed his own helmet
and the cool, thin air of the cockpit soothed his anxious lungs.
“How are they?” he gasped, unsure of what answer to expect.

Milliken took his own helmet off and breathed
an airy sigh, “They are out, but for all it’s worth, I think
they’ll be okay.”

“You?” Uzziah asked, trying to catch his
breath.

“Me? I think it’ll be a long while before I’m
okay again.” Milliken pressed the button to close the door and
Uzziah returned to the controls to correct their heading. And as
Milliken put Tanner and Cyrus in more comfortable positions, they
all sped toward the slowly expanding band of orange looming on the
horizon.

• • • • •

—
Dada, today during physical fitness, Scott Seal
broke his arm.

—
How’d he do that?

—
He tied a jacket around his neck like a cape and
said he was Power Stone and then just jumped off the
balcony.

—
Well, that sounds like a boneheaded thing to
do.

—
Miss Hasabe said it’s cuz children feel like
they are indestructible.

—
You know, a lot of adults who have forgotten
what it’s like to have a sense of wonder and adventure say that
about children.

—
Yeah, I don’t feel indestructible. It’s just I
can’t imagine how bad breaking an arm or something would
hurt.

—
And now that Scott Seal knows what it feels
like, I’m sure he won’t do it again anytime soon.

—
Do you ever feel indestructible, Dada?

—
Never. Sometimes I feel entirely too
vulnerable.

—
That’s strange, cuz sometimes I think you might
be.

—
Well see, there’s a trick to being
indestructible. Something that should have killed you has to hit
you for you to earn that label, and just because you keep going
afterwards, doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. How do you know that
every time Dr. Mindbender’s robots hit Power Stone with a mag-lev,
or The Eviscerator blasts him with pulse lasers, that it doesn’t
hurt?

—
I guess I don’t.

—
We just think Power Stone is great, and that he
can’t be killed because he gets back up.

—
So maybe he isn’t really indestructible after
all.

—
Exactly, and I bet he’s the only man in the room
that knows it. Bottom line is this—if you ever hit a man as hard as
you can and he gets up like it didn’t hurt, hit him again. And if
anyone ever hits you so hard you’re not sure you should have even
gotten up, you do whatever it takes to make sure he never, ever
hits you like that again.

• • • • •

Cyrus awoke soaked in his own sweat. The envirosuit
was an excellent insulator, which in the frigid temperatures of the
Miasma kept the body warm, but that same insulation caused the body
to marinate in the fumes of its own perspiration when the ambient
air was closer to room temperature. He couldn’t tell how long he
had been out, or even what had knocked him out, but as Cyrus
propped himself against the wall, he noticed Tanner was groggy, but
was already up as well. Cyrus’s head pounded, only slightly out of
sync with the whirring of the gravity drive and thrusters of the
mining lev.

The sky was a milky yellow as if a film had
been stretched across it. A few stars could still be seen, but
either the mining lev’s speed or Cyrus’s slowly widening pupils
made it seem like the stars were fading from view by the moment. As
his vision cleared, Cyrus could see a thin crescent of white low in
the sky with an occasional glimmer beneath it. It must have been
the J.L. Orbital Station.

And then Cyrus remembered the look on
Tanner’s face when they had approached the building that Tanner had
called The Third Temple at the center of the strange city.

“Marcus, you okay?” Cyrus asked, his own
voice cracking under the strain of speech.

“Stellar.” The sarcasm was disturbing coming
from Tanner.

“What was that place back there?” Cyrus was
unable to hold back his curiosity any longer.

“As far as I can tell, that place was New
Jerusalem; but it makes no sense.” Tanner was more distraught than
Cyrus had ever seen him.

“That place was carved directly from the rock
it lay in. The entire city was like one gigantic statue. It’s
impossible to tell when those buildings were cut,” Milliken chimed
in. He sounded bewildered himself, but no more shaken than everyone
else, “but the aves were made of fused quartz, which had to have
been laid at the same time as, or after, the cutting. Those aves
were fused approximately six hundred thousand years ago according
to the data.”

Milliken pulled his datadeck free of the
clamps that held it beneath the base of the holographic imager.

“It’s a good thing I tamped this thing down,”
he opened the deck and pulled up the map of the underground city.
“My guess is somehow the early Ashans discovered that power source
from the surface while they were scanning the area for gold
deposits. Even though the entry cave looked smooth from the inside,
you can see on this mapping it was pretty sloppy. Not even close to
the technical precision of the city itself.” Milliken pressed the
keys to link the deck to the holographic imager and then zoomed in
on the hologram to give a clear view of how wavy the passage was.
“This part was cut with the extraplanetary lasers. Evidently
whoever found it was in a rush.”

“It was probably Kalem. That city is probably
what got him killed,” Cyrus added.

“But why?” Uzziah asked.

“For the same reason they wanted to kill
us.”

“But
who
was trying to kill us?”
Milliken asked without looking up from the hologram.

“The Echelon probably.
They
were
started by that Rex Mundi character.
They
were the ones who
gaffed us at the orbital when we got here.
They
were
probably the ones that killed my friend.” Cyrus was more animated
now, but he appeared to be in pain.

“Why would they kill someone who could help
them figure out what it all meant? You said he studied that sort of
thing, right?” Milliken asked, looking up this time.

“Maybe they already knew what it meant, or
thought they did. Either way, Kalem’s knowledge would be precisely
what
got
him killed; which means we need to figure out what
it is they think they know before they find us.” Cyrus was nursing
his shoulder, but it didn’t seem to help.