Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) (26 page)

They stepped out into the street again and continued the short distance along the thoroughfare.  Knile’s eyes darted around the street frantically as he tried to take in everything at once.  This close to their objective, he wanted to be alert to any sign of danger.  If something was amiss, or if there were traps waiting for them, he wanted to know about them before it was too late.

However, everything seemed normal.  A group of young boys were playing marbles on the pavement.  An old lady in a grey shawl passed by, complaining about the rent, and another walked at her side with her hand on her elbow, nodding in agreement.  Two adolescent girls shared a joke on a balcony above, pointing at someone in the throng below.  A pair of men lugged a heavy steel axle on their shoulders, grunting and sweating under its considerable weight.

Knile had become accustomed to spotting threats over the years, recognising them with a skill that bordered on prescience.

But right now he felt nothing.  There were no warning tendrils scraping at the edges of his consciousness, no alarm bells sounding in the back of his mind.

He didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing.

They arrived at the place, and Knile had to double- and triple-check the coordinates on his holophone to verify that they were correct.

“Is this it?” Roman said over his shoulder.

“Yes.”

“It can’t be.”

“This is it, Roman.”  He glanced at the boy.  “Unless it’s all one big hoax.”

As one they turned to the little workshop that lay smack bang in the centre of the coordinates that had been revealed to them moments before.  It was a pokey little place, cluttered with all manner of machine parts and trays full of grease-coated bearings.  There were boxes of screws and nails, rows of fan blades.  There was one occupant inside, a young woman with black hair and a tattoo of a snake under her left ear that ran down her neck.  She’d been scraping at the intake of an air filtration unit with a screwdriver when they’d arrived, and now she stopped and looked over at them expectantly.

“Help you guys?” she said, wiping grease from her fingers onto her shirt.  “You need a sucker fixed?”

“No,” Knile said.  “We’re looking for someone.”

The woman turned back to he
r work.  “Then unless that someone is me, you’re not going to find them.  I’m the only one here.”

“Is that so?” Knile said.

The woman glared at him.  “Get lost, man.  I don’t have no time for games.”

Roman gripped Knile’s shirt.  “This isn’t the place, Knile.  No way.  You must have read the coordinates wrong.”

“I didn’t read them wrong.”

“Then it’s a hoax, like you said,” Talia chimed in.  “Let’s get out of here.”

“Show her the tattoo,” Roman urged.  “Go on.”

Knile glanced back out into the street, considering what to do.  Then he stepped further into the shop and held up his arm.

“Someone gave me this tattoo,” he said, and for the first time the woman stopped what she was doing and gave Knile her full attention.  “There were coordinates embedded inside it that led me here.  To this workshop.  Do you know anything about that?”

The woman gave him a measuring look.  “Sounds like a neat trick.”

“It says ‘Skybreach’.  Does that mean anything to you?”

“Me?” she said.  “Nah.  I’m just a dumb tech.”  She nodded her head over Knile’s shoulder.  “But it probably means something to him.”

The three of them turned to see a man who had appeared at the back of the workshop, standing still and watching them closely.  At first glance Knile thought he was wearing a mask, but then he realised that the man’s face was heavily scarred, great ruts of reddish skin running diagonally from the top left of his face to the bottom right.  He was bald, and his scalp was also ruined and mottled with dark patches of coarse flesh.

Talia gasped and took a step back, but the man ignored her.  He had eyes for only one person.

“Knile Oberend,” the man said.  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

25

Talia and Roman looked at Knile, but he could only offer them a bewildered shake of his head in return.  He’d never seen the scarred man before in his life.

“Who are you?” Knile said.  “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.”

The man held up an index finger as if suggesting that he needed a moment before replying.

“Iris,” the man said, walking slowly forward.  “Make sure we’re not disturbed, please.”

The woman with the snake tattoo got up and moved over to the door to stand guard, effectively blocking their escape, and Knile reacted immediately.

“Whoa!” he said.  “Step away from the door or–”

“You’re in no danger here, Knile,” the man said calmly.  “You can leave at any time if that’s what you want.”

“Is that so?”

The man gestured toward the doo
r.  “Go.  I won’t stop you,
nor will Iris.”

Knile exchanged a glance with Talia, then returned his attention to the man.

“All right.  Start talking.”

The scarred man nodded.  “My name is Emil Baranek.  I’m the one who’s responsible for you being here.  I’m the one who sent you
that
.”  He pointed to the tattoo on Knile’s forearm.

“You told the kid to tag me over in Gaslight?”

“Yes.  Seems a bit crude, doesn’t it?  It’s effective, though.  You’re here, aren’t you?”

Knile glanced back at the doorway, but Iris hadn’t moved.

“You’re part of Skybreach?” he said.

“I’m more
than that,” Emil said.  “I’m its founder.  I’m at the core of everything that happens within it.”

Emil stopped a short distance away.  From this proximity it was evident that the extent of his scarring was quite pronounced.  His ears were misshapen and diminished, as if they had been partially melted away; his nose was flattened and his eyes stared out darkly from between the folds of his ruined skin.

“I’m sorry about my appearance,” Emil said, noting Knile’s stare.  There was a twinkle of humour in those dark eyes.  “Quite the freakshow, yes?”

“I’ve seen worse,” Knile said.

“Not outside a morgue, I hope,” Emil said.  He leaned comfortably on the bench by his side.  “Would you care to sit?”

“We’re fine,” Knile said.  “Say what you have to say.”

“Sure.  Let me tell you what Skybreach is, and how it came about.”  Emil took a deep breath as he gathered his thoughts.  “There is a system in place on this planet that is grossly unfair.  It’s skewed toward the rich and the powerful, the privileged.  I’m sure you’re all aware of this already.  There’s only
one
option available to wretches like you and me, those who were left behind, and that’s through the top of the Reach.  Earth has no future and there’s only one way out.”

“You can skip the history lesson,” Knil
e said.  “Just g
et on with it.”

“Getting aboard that railcar and travelling up the Wire… that’s all most of us think about, right?  It’s the only thing that matters.  Yet, the allocation of seating aboard that railcar is a horribly corrupt process.  There’s no chance for the common man to escape.  In effect, this system determines who lives and who dies.  The toxins get worse and our ability to cope with them becomes lessened as our pool of resources dwindle.

“I don’t like this system.  I don’t like the way it favours the fat aristocrats in Lux and I don’t like the way it ignores everyone else.  It’s wrong and it needs to change.”

“I hope you’ve got something better than this to tell us,” Knile said.  “Every street urchin on every corner of this damn city already knows this.”

“But they don’t know how to
change
it,” Emil said fervently.

“And you can,” Knile said flatly.

Emil seemed to consider this for a moment.  “I wish you’d all met my wife,” he said suddenly.  “She was a beautiful woman.  Full of heart.  Full of vigour.  She lit up my world every
minute of every hour
, always pulled me out of despair when I felt hopeless, gave me courage when I was afraid.  We planned to have a family,” he said as a sad smile touched his lips.  “Three children.  No more, no less.  She was very particular about that.  And one of them had to be a girl.”  Emil chuckled.  “She was a woman who knew what she wanted.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Knile said.

“One day something happened to her,” Emil said, and the smile faded from his face.  “That love for life, that spirit
,
just simply… broke.  She’d come to a realisation, you see.  She’d finally arrived at the same understanding as the rest of us.”  He looked pointedly at Knile.  “She realised that we were stuck here on Earth, condemned to die, with no hope of escape.”  He ran his fingers lightly along the ridges on his face
,
and his voice dropped to a whisper.  “She climbed up onto the edge of a balcony far up the Reach and she looked out at the ruin of this world, and she couldn’t see the beauty in it anymore.  She couldn’t see the hope.”  His mouth twisted as he remembered.  “She leapt from there, cast herself into oblivion because she couldn’t face a life without a future.”  Emil glanced at each of them in turn.  “I didn’t want anyone to see a loved one go through that
ever
again.  I didn’t want them to see the things I’d seen, the things I could never erase from my memory.  I wanted to give people hope, make them believe that there was still a future for them, even if they were nothing more than a simple carpenter or a farmer.  A beggar. 
Anyone
should be able to leave.  That was why I devoted my life to changing the system.  That was why I created Skybreach.”

“You sound like you’ve been through a lot,” Talia said compassionately.  “I’m sorry about your wife.”

“Thank you.”  Emil sighed.  “I still think of her
constantly
.  She’s the driving force within me, the one who compels me to get up each and every day and redouble my efforts.”  His mouth hardened.  “It will be done.  Skybreach will change this world.  We’ll give everyone a chance to leave.”

“How?” Knile said.

“Skybreach is an expertly crafted team of men and women who are the best at what they do.  I’ve spent years scouring the dregs of the Earth to find them, to bring them together.  I’ve gathered people from all walks of life – from science and medicine and technical disciplines.  I’ve brought in architects, builders, botanists, you name it.”

“That’s all very nice, but how are botanists going to help get you off-world?” Knile said.

“Those people are part of the team for what happens
after
we get off-world,” Emil said.  “For Stage Two.  For Stage One, the process of actually taking over the Wire, I have different personnel.”

“Such as?”

“Combat specialists and military tacticians, ex-Enforcers who know the Reach–”

“You think you can take it by force?” Knile said, astounded.

“Not entirely.  I also have my ace in the hole – a hacker who can get into the Consortium
’s back-end and turn things in our favour.”

“That’s not possible,” Knile said.  “Not unless he has access to Consortium hardware that’s been verified on their network.  It’s not accessible from outside.  Believe me, I would know.”

“It’s very much possible,” Emil said with a grin, “and your presence here proves that, Knile.”

“Huh?”

“How do you think I found you when you returned to the Reach?  I had the kid walk straight up to you and plant that tattoo on your arm, remember?  Haven’t you wondered how I did that?”

Knile considered that.  “Well, now that you mention it…”

“My hacker has access to the Consortium manifests,” Emil said.  “We see the name of every person who travels aboard the railcar.  Your name was one of many that we’d flagged.  When you popped up, we were there, ready to invite you to the team.”

“So why me?” Knile said.  “What can I offer you?”

“Don’t be modest, Knile.  I know what they used to call you.  The ‘Ghost of the Reach’.”

“I haven’t been called that for a long time.”

Emil stepped closer.  “You know the inner workings of the Reach better than anyone.  We have access to your history.  We’ve seen what you’ve done.  You’d make a valuable addition to Skybreach if you agreed to join us.”

Knile glanced at his two companions.  “Let’s get one thing straight right now, Emil.  I won’t be joining anything unless Talia and Roman come with me.  If you’re not going to accept them
too, we might as well end this conversation right now.”

Emil considered this.  “Are these people your family?”

Knile looked at Talia and Roman in turn.  “Yeah,” he said, smiling.  “They are.”

“Then I don’t see why not.  Others who have joined have brought wives, husbands, children.  After all, we’ll need families when we make a new start on Enceladus.”

“Enceladus?” Knile said, perplexed.  “The moon of Saturn?  What’s that got to do with it?”