Merry Chase

  Firven 14, 1294:

  Some very unsettling men came to town today and spoke with my mother and father. I cannot say what they wanted, but I hope they never come back.

  — From Lhinde’s Diary

  We zipped out of the hangar through the new hole in the wall, passing through the billows of smoke, which gave us cover for our escape. In a few seconds, we were out of the smoke and I got my first glimpse of the city.

  Haccolces was strange beyond my imagining. I had never actually seen the capital city on my way in, only glimpses of a large complex on my way into the prison. This was . . . I couldn’t describe what I felt as I took it in. Structure after structure reaching high into the sky all around us. Smoke billowing from a multitude of towering stacks, lights flaring from a thousand pinpricks on other walls, and . . . metal. So much metal. Steel? They did call it the Steel City, after all. I had only learned about the alloy recently, after coming to Gaea, as we didn’t have it back on Mani—only the sparest traces of iron, and they were rarer than gold. Some buildings in Haccolces were constructed mostly of concrete, while others seemed to be entirely made of steel or a similar metal.

  The sky above Haccolces, nearly the full dark of night, rippled with angry clouds, roiling and churning restlessly as they stretched farther than I could see. The smoke from the stacks rose up and mixed with them to form a picture of industrialization so alien to me that I could only watch in stunned silence as Zent flew us out of the city. Above it all was one last technological marvel I couldn’t explain: a gigantic, transparent red shield stretching across the entire city. A great dome that encapsulated the entire metropolis. I had heard it referenced before by men in the labs, but . . .

  We were flying right for it.

  “Don’t worry,” Bddo told me, “We’ll bust right through that shield. Watch.”

  “We don’t call her the Shieldbuster for nothing,” Zent said, hitting a red button on the center console of the ship just as we approached the edge of the city. The shield wall flickered before us, visible patterns running through it.

  Suddenly, the red dome pulsed, and two towers along the city’s wall went out, taking a good chunk of the field with it. The towers seemed to be what supplied power to the shield. The shield faded in front of us, staticky webs reaching between the gaps.

  Zent pressed another button and fired two missiles from our ship. They shot forwards and crashed into the shield wall, breaking it open before us, and we passed through the breach.

  “Yeah!” Bddo shouted. To me, he added, “We spent years developing the right frequencies for a pulse to take out those towers.”

  Zent looked back from his pilot’s seat. “That’s how we take back the Mother!”

  Ccal, seated opposite his Captain, was paying attention to the radar screen on the dash. “Uh, Cap? Little problem.”

  Zent glanced down with a Hellebes curse. “Two of ‘em, directly behind us. And it had to be Stormhawks . . . Are the operatives still in the city?”

  Ccal shook his head. “Already gone.”

  “Hang on,” Zent called.

  Bddo looked at me and pursed his lips. He was about to say something when Zent suddenly swung the ship into a rotating barrel turn to the right.

  The tumble jarred me, and I threw my hands out, tensing my whole body to brace. It felt as though my brain were spinning around in a carriage wheel. But no sooner had Zent acted than a burst of green streaks flew by the left window. They probably would have missed us anyway, but I couldn’t say. When we came out of the roll, Zent rammed his steering lever forward, sending us into a sudden dive. He proceeded with another set of evasive maneuvers as more beams passed overhead.

  “We don’t have guns on this ship?” I asked in panic.

  “Nope,” Bddo replied. “Not omnidirectional ones.”

  Before I could work out what that word meant, Zent engaged the thrusters to full and shot forward once more, throwing me backward in my seat. “Oh, this is not comfortable,” I muttered as my stomach lurched.

  “They’re still in pursuit,” Ccal warned the captain.

  Zent did not answer, continuing to grip the controls tightly and keep an eye on the dash monitor, slowly taking us down in altitude.

  No beams hit us, so I took that as a good sign and cautiously looked below us, then out at the surrounding landscape. Now that Zent wasn’t doing quite such crazy maneuvers, I had an opportunity. And . . . what a sight. It was a mountainous land this side of Haccolces—southeastward—tapering downward mile by mile in topography, with ridges of varying height sprawling outward. Some of the taller peaks, already above us, were capped in snow, below which stretched naked rock. We didn’t have that much pure stone on Mani, I was sure of that. Below this layer stretched green forest, however, and finally deep valleys too misted over to make out the bottoms. As far as I could see, there was nothing but wilderness.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Green wilderness. I still wasn’t used to the color. The dark of night muted it, but it remained distinctive.

  We flew at a wide angle toward one of the nearby mountain peaks, taking brief cover behind the snow-laden stone before shooting for the next highest peak. Zent was taking us down to the valleys.

  “Think we can shake them here?” Ccal asked.

  “Don’t know, but I’ll try,” Zent replied, navigating past rocky cliffs. As we passed, I marveled at the intricate strata making up the stone: burnt orange, brown and white.

  “Where are we?” I asked Bddo.

  The lanky Hellebes shrugged. “Just southeast of Haccolces. Still smack in the midst of North Terrol. Couldn’t tell you more than that.”

  North Terrol. One of the four major continents of Gaea, home to Haccolces and one other city . . . Haven? Yes, that sounds right.

  “They call these the Rooting Valleys,” Zent informed me. “Trying to lose our pursuers right now but . . . ugh, those Stormhawks are just as fast as this old girl.” He proceeded to weave in and out of consecutive close rock outcroppings, displaying what must have been years of skill with the flying machines.

  Well, he did say he’d been with the Red Horizon for fifteen years, I recalled, trying to keep my head from whipping to either side. In fact, if what he’d told me a few months back was true, he knew my mother and father. So far, I hadn’t managed to dig up any information on him in my memories of what Mother had told me as a child . . . Photographic memory had its limits when she had only given me so much information to go on, not to mention I still had trouble accessing my Memory Vault.

  Looking out, I saw we were getting out of the mid-sized mountains and into the forested foothills of one of the verdant valleys. Below us lay a blanket of fog, reminding me of the day I’d flown over the Great Chasm of Mani with Oliver on his glider . . . Oh, I missed that little upstart.

  “Hurray for fog,” Bddo said unexcitedly.

  “Not like they can’t find us with their instruments,” Ccal pointed out.

  “I’ll take what we can get,” Zent said in a stressed tone. “We just—” He cut off as the ship lurched suddenly and a warning light began to flicker on the dash. “Blast! Now of all times.” He quickly flipped a few sliders and switches on the dash, adjusting the ship’s individual engine output.

  I said nothing, only gritted my teeth and waited to hear that we were going to crash and die.

  “Might be able to make it,” Zent said. “The shields took most of the damage.”

  “Those are powerful beams, Cap.”

  We continued to glide through the fog at a fast clip, though I could feel the ship limping a bit. Soon, however, we took another hit amidst a volley of enemy fire, and I heard something explode that should not be exploding.

  “Aw, this ain’t good,” Bddo said, hanging his head. “Kid, get ready to make a sudden, unintended collision with some stone. Maybe a tree if we’re lucky.”

  “Shut up back there,” Zent yelled, yanking on his controls. “Trying to slow her down, but we don’t want to be shot again . . . It’s showing a flat place up ahead; we can make a controlled crash there.”

  “How controlled?” I demanded. “What do I do?”

  “Nothing, kid,” Ccal snapped. “We’re gonna use Geokinesis. Just brace yourself.”

  I did, stamping my feet into the metal floor and jamming my head back against the headrest. My heart beat wildly in my chest, as though trying to keep rhythm with the sputtering of our single engine. The ship began to spin uncontrollably despite Zent’s best efforts, and soon . . .

  BAM!

  My whole body jolted, and the noise of the impact hurt my ears. I think the ship tumbled half onto its side, as I was suddenly hanging to the left. But we had stopped. Slowly, I opened my eyes to see that my companions and I seemed to be intact, and even the ship, except for a large spiderweb of cracks running across the glass.

  Then I noticed the green glow around us. Ccal and Bddo both wore faces of intense concentration, only now easing up, and around them streamed green energy like a floating liquid. It dissipated quickly, seeming to sink back into the ground, running straight through the ship’s hull. I wondered briefly what this phenomenon was, before Ccal looked down at me and said, “Geokinesis. Comes in handy. I assume you don’t know how to use it yet?”

  I shook my head, an awkward motion from this angle. I’d heard the word but knew only vaguely what it was.

  “Well, let’s get out first,” Zent said. “And quickly. Hopefully, they’ll assume us dead, but we can’t be sure. We do have the Mother Heiress, after all.”

  “Yeah, why would they do that?” Bddo grumbled. “Considering our cargo and all.”

  Zent did not reply. Instead, he proceeded to heave himself free from his seat, holding it with two heavily-muscled arms as he kicked both doors free, the ones now facing upward and accessible.

  The rest of us did likewise, working our buckles free and climbing one at a time out of the ship. Bddo hauled a bag of what I assumed to be provisions out of the hull. The drop to the ground was a solid ten feet, which on Gaea felt like forty. The men took it in stride, but I would have stumbled without my mystery strength, which I now suspected to be Geokinesis, to enhance my feet.

  We were deep in a forest at the bottom of the Rooting Valleys. The ship itself had lurched up against a massive tree whose top was shrouded in the misty cover. Its leaves, lit by the lights of our busted ship, were some shade of green like the others scattered around, and more than my own height in length. The vegetation on Gaea was truly something to behold. Dark green moss squelched underfoot.

  Zent shut off the flickering floodlights of the ship and led us away, uphill toward . . . the way we had been heading? I wasn’t sure. My sense of direction was thoroughly skewed, though I was able to walk just fine, with only minor bruises to attribute to the crash. Just shaken up a bit.

  “Anyone hear them?” Ccal asked, scanning the foggy sky.

  I shook my head, looking around as I followed my companions. I couldn’t hear the drone of engines or the sparking noise of blaster fire colliding with the mountains anymore. All was still, save for our feet splurtching in the wet mossy valley floor and the chirping of . . . birds? Insects? Did frogs make that kind of sound? I was pretty sure they had frogs here on Gaea.

  “I think the buggers’re gone,” Bddo said at length. “What do we do now, Cap?”

  Zent stopped, turning his head both directions and listening for a moment. “For now, we’re stranded.”