Текст книги "The Rift"

Автор книги: Chris Howard

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CHAPTER SIX

Even in the dim light, the boats sparkled against the sky and chopped up the water, as if they were shattering some vast sheet of glass. They were far off—took my eye from the scope, and I could see nothing but the pale bend of the earth. But the boats were heading right for us, there was no doubt about that.

I pressed up at the scope again. In the middle of the fleet, the biggest boat was darker in color, and seemed to be out ahead of the rest. I pictured Harvest on that boat, leading the charge, and I imagined him on its bow, his scarred face pressed at a scope like my scope. His eyes cheating the distance. Hell, perhaps we were staring straight at one another, as if to see who might flinch first.

I climbed down into the cockpit and glanced out the window. Down on the deck, the survivors stood stone-faced and silent, guns squeezed in their fists as Alpha marched between them, going over how to load up and aim the weapons, and making a big deal out of how few bullets we had left.

“So you wait till the shot’s for the taking,” I heard her say as I slid down the ladder. “But don’t wait a moment too long.”

The sun had turned the sky to ash and embers, and it was getting colder by the second as I pushed through the crowd and found Crow at the bow.

Kade was there with him. Not long ago, the punk had a knife at Crow’s throat, but here we were all partnered up. Too many enemies already, I reminded myself. No room on the list for new ones.

Not yet, anyway.

“Five boats,” I said, coming up to the railing and pointing south. “Each one probably bigger than this one. And we’re heading straight for them.”

“Then it’s a good thing the girl makes a good general.” Kade nodded over at Alpha. “A fine-looking one, too.”

“Shouldn’t you be doing something useful?” I said, burning up when I saw the way he was staring at her.

“I’ve been searching for someone to work on the boat, if you must know. Trying to find someone who might know how to power that tank up, too.”

“Out of this bunch?” Crow muttered.

“Hard to tell where people have been. Or what they can do. I counted one Soljah, for starters.” Kade glanced up at the scar burned on the back of Crow’s neck. Then he turned to me. “Oh, yeah, I hear we have a tree builder, too. That should come in handy.”

“And what did you used to do?”

“I was a scholar. A poet. A thief and a fighter.”

“Ever work with mechanics?”

“And get my hand dirty? No, thanks. But I found a woman who used to work with the Salvage Guild. She’s down there now, cracking open the steering shaft. Trying to snap off the automatics, move out the rudders. Said she used to work the Heaps, before she got taken.”

I might have been impressed, if I’d believed the Heaps existed. Never seemed to me like the Salvage Guild would keep all their best stuff off-limits, though. Their whole business was based on scavenging up old machines and gadgets, fixing them, then trading them for water, corn, old world Benjamins, even slave labor. So why would they keep their finest prizes all hidden away?

“If she gets the steering working, point us southeast,” I said. “I saw land through the scope.”

“And there was me thinking you’d just get in the way.”

“You know this man? Harvest?” I asked, trying to ignore Kade’s needling.

“I know of him.” His green eyes turned squinty as the wind cut cruel. “Man who calls himself king.”

“We should get folk inside,” Alpha said, joining us. “Before they all freeze to death. They’re as ready for battle as they’re gonna get.”

She shoved a pistol into my hand, then held one up to Crow.

“No,” he said. “Give mine to the redhead.”

“I know what you’re thinking.” Kade flashed his big smile at Alpha, seeing her hesitate to hand him the gun. “But I suggest you let me earn your trust.”

He grinned even bigger once she’d handed the gun over, then he spun it around on his finger in a way that said he knew how to shoot pretty good.

“Nice work, getting them ready,” he said, nodding at the rabble Alpha had lined up on the deck. “I’m taking it you’ve seen some action.”

“I’ve seen plenty.” Alpha put her hand on Crow’s back, trying to make him quit wobbling. “We all have.”

“There comes a time when plenty’s too much.” Kade was staring at Crow when he said it, but Crow’s gaze was stuck on the horizon, watching the end of day and the beginnings of night.

“Where’s Miss Zee?” Crow asked.

“Ah, yes. Her.” Kade frowned. “Been meaning to tell you. We have another problem below deck.”

I hadn’t realized how many folk were still down in the hull. They were hunkered together at the far end, forming a scruffy circle around the tank, and one woman was singing a song about redemption and the blood of Zion, so I could tell she was Rasta. I mean, you couldn’t tell by looking at her, since GenTech had shaved off her dreadlocks, and she was dressed all in purple, not in red, gold and green. Most of the others were kneeling and praying, their hands drumming slow on the floor, and it didn’t seem like these folk were getting ready for battle. Sounded more like they were getting ready to sleep.

“We should find guns for these people,” I said to Kade.

“Guns aren’t the problem.” He pointed through the crowd. “She is.”

Zee was stood next to the tank, in the center of everything. The panel on the steel box was still hanging open, and the lights still flashed inside the glass, and I’d no doubt those numbers were still blinking down, too.

“They want to surrender,” said Kade. “Her most of all.”

“I’ll talk some sense into her. You wait here.”

I worked my way into the middle of the strugglers, joining Zee in the space these folk had left around their steel-box shrine.

“You got it hooked up,” I said quietly, when I saw she’d wired the tank’s control pad back in.

“Didn’t do any good.” Zee pulled her long hair back with her hand.

“Had a feeling. But I heard someone might be able to charge it back up.”

“No luck so far,” she said. “I feel like we’re losing him.”

“Him?”

“You know what I mean.”

A woman shoved past us, huddling up at the tank to press her dirty palms on the glass, then smacking her wet lips at the steel.

“Give us a second,” Zee said to some of the others hovering around, and they pushed away, giving me and her a little breathing room.

“It’s Harvest,” I whispered. “He’s coming for the trees.”

“Harvest?” She kept her voice low, as if she didn’t want to disturb the singing none, but her eyes were wide, and she was biting her lip.

“Don’t you worry. I ain’t gonna let him hurt you.”

“People said it was GenTech,” she said, and she almost looked disappointed.

“Could be they’re the same thing.”

I peered into the tank. There was a little space above the liquid, an air pocket nearly a foot high, and I watched one of the saplings reaching for it, as if trying to break free. Then I glanced down at the bottom, where the remains of my father were all freaky and faded, and all of me ached for my old man to still be alive and be stood there beside me. He was the one who’d come north to try to put things right. All I’d come for was him, and the promise of someplace that was different.

“Either way,” Zee said, leaning against the tank. “I suppose Harvest could know.”

“Know what?”

Her eyes were gray and shiny, like bits of scuffed chrome. “How to keep this tank working.”

My heart sank down to my toes when she said it.

“We can’t fight him, Banyan.”

“We fought him before, and we won. What? You don’t remember what it looked like in the pit of his slave ship?”

“I remember,” she said, her voice turning sharp as her face turned away from me. “It was the last time I saw my mother alive.”

“That’s why we have to keep fighting.”

“No.” The red lights from the tank played on her brown skin. “We have to keep these things safe.”

“You just want to surrender?” I stared past her at all the people singing and praying. “After everything we’ve done?”

“If that’s what it takes. Give him the trees, and the trees get to carry on. It’s the best hope we have.”

I turned back to the tank, watched that tallest sapling trying to float its tip into the air at the top. “You want to just give these away? To that slaving son of a bitch?”

“They’re all that’s left, Banyan.”

“You mean, because I fired up and burned down the rest of them? And you don’t think that keeps me up at night?” I remembered the shells of those white trees burning on that island, creating a distraction so we could get the people free and steal ourselves a future from GenTech. I could still smell the smoke from the fire, and still feel the weight of my mother, dying in my arms.

“We sacrificed too much to give up now,” I said.

“But the trees are more important than who gets to control them.”

“I don’t want to control them. I just don’t want GenTech to hoard them away.”

“You don’t know he’s with GenTech.”

“Might be he’s even worse. Who knows how many people he sent off to that island? And what about the ones who didn’t make it that far? The ones who burned in Vega. Like Sal.”

“Don’t.”

“They threw him in a pit full of flames, and I watched them do it. And how many others died just like him because of men like Harvest and GenTech’s greed?”

“So we stop fighting—then no one has to die.”

“I thought you changed your mind when we busted off of that island. After all we did, and now you just want to quit.”

“I want to live,” Zee said. “And I want you to live, too. And Crow and Alpha and everyone on this boat. And the trees, Banyan. You said you’d keep them safe.” She pointed at the saplings through the open panel. “You told your mother you would. I was there when you promised.”

“Giving them to that bastard ain’t keeping them safe.”

“Nor is letting them sink. The world needs them, Banyan. Not just you.”

“He was my father,” I said.

“And what? He was just some man that left me?”

The singing had stopped and the drumming broke down, and I could feel everyone’s eyes upon us.

“He didn’t know about you,” I said, trying to lower my voice. “Or he would have come found you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does. And I would have come for you, too.”

“You did.” She smiled at me, but then she quickly looked away, and I was losing her all over again. “All these people around us, they’re pieces, like the scraps you built trees out of. It’s when you put them together that they become something special. That’s what a family is, Banyan. Not some man who ran away.”

“He ran away so he could fix things.”

“And you’re still running after him.” Zee put her hand out. I thought she was reaching for me, but instead she touched the black steel that cloaked the tank. “But he’s gone. And we can’t afford to lose what he left us.”

I started to back away from her.

“Please,” she said, her pretty face made ugly by the things she was saying. “He’ll destroy us. It’ll be even worse than before.”

“Not if I can help it.”

I stumbled through the crowd, heading for the ramp, and I knew Zee wouldn’t follow. I could sense it, I guess. That lass was the last bit of blood that I had.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The big moon was blocked by clouds and drizzle, but despite the darkness, I spotted Alpha at the bow right away. She was leaning against the railing and peering into the night, and as I stood back, watching her stretch her shoulders and flex her legs, I wondered if there’d come a time when there was no battle to limber up for. A time I could hold onto that girl and never let go.

“What is it, bud?” she said.

“How come you know it’s me?” I stepped up to the railing to join her.

“Maybe I just hoped it was.”

“You see the boats yet?”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

I put my hand on her back, trying to make like it felt natural, but there was something awkward in the gesture. Maybe because of the way Alpha just stood there, like she was frozen solid beneath her damp rags. Or maybe because what I really wanted was to feel her whole body against me and seize some last sweetness.

“There’s a girl inside,” she said. “In the hold. And she’s too young to have a gun in her hand.”

“We’ll get her down in the hull.” I figured the girl had to be tiny, seeing as how small some of Alpha’s own clan had been. “There’s a bunch of them down there who ain’t planning on fighting. And guess who’s heading them up?”

“I know this kid,” said Alpha, clearly not in the guessing mood. “I mean, I seen her before. We traded her down in Old Orleans. Year before you came.”

I figured there weren’t no wonder the little lass had a gun in her hand then. Snatched up by pirates, traded to Harvest, then hauled north by GenTech. And now here she was, about to face Harvest again.

“Ain’t your fault she’s out here,” I said.

“I don’t know. I’ll take my fair share of the blame.” Alpha’s voice was barely louder than the wind. “Where’s Red at, anyway?”

“Overseeing work on the boat, trying to free up the steering.”

She glanced about, making sure it was just us out there.

“I’m worried about Crow,” she said. “It’s like he’s given up or something.”

“We get him back to Niagara, he’ll be all right.”

“That’s a long ways from here, bud. And I don’t get how he wants to head back there, anyway. Didn’t he say he got banished?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thrown out.”

“So that makes sense to you?”

“What you trying to say?”

“I’m saying Crow ain’t what he was. And he might not hold much sway with the Soljahs.”

My hand was still on her back, and my arm was shaking, and her back was trembling, and everything was shivered to the bone. I leaned into her, put my arms around her.

“You’re with me, though,” she said. “All the way, right?”

“All the way.”

“And if something happened to me, you know I’d want you to head back there. To my people. To Old Orleans. You and the trees would have the protection of all the pirates on the plains.”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“They deserve them saplings.”

“You’re getting way ahead of the game.”

“Promise me, Banyan.”

“Promise what?”

She kissed me then. She was as warm as the air was freezing, and it bloomed me up on the inside, filling me with feelings that weren’t born out of fear.

“You and me,” I whispered to her. “We’ll grow that forest together. And I’ll build us a home in the treetops, you’ll see.”

But the moment was over. Alpha weren’t even listening. She just pointed across the water, and I could see the five boats, creeping out of the void like bad-luck stars.

We found the girl in the cargo hold and took the gun off her. And she was tiny, all right. All elbows and ears. Alpha took the extra pistol. Rounded up a couple other kids we thought were too young to be fighting. Then we herded them to the back of the boat so we could send them down the ramp that led into the hull.

Top of the ramp, we ran into Kade and the Salvage Guild woman he’d found. Her purple rags were covered in oil, her knuckles all torn.

“Any luck with the rudders?” I asked them.

“Luck’s got nothing to do with it.” The woman looked like a piece of salvage herself, useful but rough at the edges. She rubbed her big hands together and grinned. “But if we get up in that cockpit and start steering, this old beauty will point wherever you want it to go.”

It did, too. And by the time the sun rose, we were heading southeast and really hauling ass about it, the boat’s engines hollering and grinding, the air stinking of burning juice.

But no matter how fast we moved, Harvest’s boats moved faster. They were still a mile or so behind us, but closing the gap much too quick.

The Salvage Guild woman had fallen asleep in the corner of the cockpit, and Crow had joined me and Alpha, peering out through the glass. Kade was there, too, of course. Hanging around like a bad smell. We all squinted through the cockpit windows, watching land appear on the horizon, silhouetted against the searing dawn sky.

As we got closer, we could make out those floating points I’d spotted through the scope. Looked like pillars now. Taller than our boat. Stony islands, maybe, scattered between us and the shore.

“What are those things?” Kade said, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun. “Rocks?”

“I don’t know. But I reckon I should see if the trees are set for moving,” I said. “We hit land, that tank needs to be ready to roll.”

“You want me to come down there?” Alpha put her hand on my arm. “Talk to Zee?”

“It’s all right. I’m done talking to her, anyway.”

“Don’t see no lava.” Crow was still focused on the horizon, his eyes squinting a little less as the sun inched up. “Them hills be brown. Snow in the distance. No steam. No ash.”

“So we’re a ways above it,” I said. “The Rift’s further south.”

“Ain’t just that,” he said. “Look at them rocks now.”

We leaned over the controls and out through the window, peering into the brand new day.

“What about them?” Kade said.

“They ain’t rocks.”

And Crow was right. They weren’t.

They were buildings.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was a city. What was left of one, anyway. Sticking up out of the water were buildings as tall as the ones they still have in Vega and the northern Steel Cities. And those old scrapers were blocking us from the shoreline. The jagged remains were too thick to travel through, and they stretched too far for us to try to cut around.

“It’s a mess,” said Alpha, peering over my shoulder.

“Aye,” Crow said. “And there’ll be more of it below water.”

Sure enough, there’d be other, shorter buildings just below the surface. A hidden sprawl, waiting to puncture us if we tried to weave through the maze.

Crow was bending back on the throttle, easing our speed.

“You insane?” I turned to him. “Harvest’s fleet’s right behind us.”

“No way we can make it through that city,” he said, and I figured it was like Alpha had said, Crow was just giving up. Hell, I should have had him run down there and hide in the hull with Zee and the rest of the cowards. Maybe he could watch over her like old times, when Frost was beating her ass and Crow never did a thing to stop him.

I stared back out at the city. Looked like concrete fingers reaching into the sky. And as I peered at those old world towers, I could see the tops were connected—thin bridges dangled between the scrapers, stretching from rooftop to rooftop, suspended in the air and stitching the skyline together.

“If we can get in there,” Kade pointed at the buildings and then up at the bridges, “those could be our escape route. Get inside a building and get to the rooftop, then we follow the bridges toward land. Unless one of you has a better idea?”

“You be as crazy as Banyan,” Crow muttered, but he limped aside so that Kade could ramp back the engines.

There were a couple dozen folk lined up along the back of the boat, and there weren’t much to their formation. They just stood there and fiddled with their weapons, ammunition counted out in buckets beside them, near-empty packets of corn in their fists.

At first, those strugglers had all looked the same to me, their shaved heads stuffed inside purple hoods, their thin bodies wrapped in fuzz and GenTech logos. But I realized now that each one of them was as different as they were desperate. Different shades to their skin and their stubble, whole different worlds in their eyes.

Kade told them we’d soon come crashing into a sunken city, and he outlined his vague plan for what we’d have to do next. And once he got done, I didn’t head to the hull like I’d planned, to make sure that tank of trees was ready for moving. Instead, I stood with the rest of the crew and stared at the four silver boats and the black one in the middle, glinting in the harsh morning light.

The fleet was so close now, I could see the glass of their cockpits and their towers of guns. None of those boats were GenTech purple. But nor was the boat I was standing on. These were old world machines, the same color as when they’d been salvaged. And whatever color his boat, I reckoned Harvest had to be working for GenTech. How else would he know to be out here, in this forgotten, frozen part of the world?

I saw the shiny bald heads of the king’s replicants, lining up on their boat decks, all dressed in gray and brandishing guns. And there were so damn many of them. Got close enough and I could see they didn’t have Harvest’s burned face—they looked just how he used to. Each one of them, a perfect dead-eyed copy.

And then those replicants weren’t just lining up across from us, they were down in the water and hurtling towards us—riding on the back of one-man pods shaped like missiles, sleek and slippery machines that soared through the waves.

“Hold your fire.” Kade’s voice rang out and took charge. “Wait till they’re in range.”

I was supposed to be seeing if the trees were ready for moving.

But I pulled out my pistol instead.

The Harvesters’ gleaming skulls zipped across the lake, the pods trailing dirty foam in the white wake behind them, the wail of their engines growing loud in our ears.

“Now,” Kade yelled from the far side of the boat, and as the rifles boomed and busted, I took aim myself.

The first Harvester was maybe forty yards from us, but as we fired at him, he drove his pod under the water and stayed down. Submerged. For maybe three seconds. Then he broke free, arcing out of the lake and skimming across the surface, speeding towards us.

And he kept spinning under the water and whirling back out as we unloaded into the last place we’d seen him. Not a damn one of us conserving our bullets. And not one of us even slowing him down.

“This way,” a woman screamed from the far side of the boat. “They’re this way.”

But they were every way, and everywhere. Their jet pods drilling through the water and diving beneath it as our bullets rained down.

Chaos clawed through our voices. Everyone shrieking and spooked. But then our hollering got drowned out by the sub gun opening fire above us, and when I glanced up at the gun tower, I saw Alpha working in a new line of ammo and crackling a fresh round loose.

She made a hit. Showering up a bloom of red in the water. Sending up a plume of smoke. The pod she’d hit reared up with no rider and bounced itself to a halt.

“They’re frontside,” Crow was yelling, sliding down the ladder to join us. “The bow. Get to the bow.”

He hit the deck and crumbled, his legs collapsing. And I ran to him, the sound of the jet pods screaming in my ears.

“Get off me.” Crow shoved me away. “They’re almost onboard. And we’re almost into that city.”

“Then do something,” I shouted, sprinting for the front of the boat. “Get the tank ready. Get Zee.”

Before I reached the bow, I spotted the grappling hooks spinning onto the railing. Two of them. Three of them. Then there was hands. Heads. Whole bodies climbing up. And I was running towards them so fast, I couldn’t aim my pistol straight.

I hit one of them, though. Got lucky, I guess. But the other two Harvesters kept coming. Raising up guns of their own and opening fire.

I hung back by the door to the cargo hold, ducking against the wall. Alpha was trying to swivel the sub gun down on the two replicants, but she couldn’t point it low enough. Thing weren’t built to shoot up its own boat.

So I charged back out with my gun blazing. Kept low and kept firing.

Until I got thrown in the air.

The boat had hit something. No time to hold on as the front end plowed downwards, the howl of steel tearing apart somewhere below me as I slammed back onto the deck.

And then I was rolling and sliding, and I never stopped moving. Just kept bouncing all the way to the edge.