Echoterminus: Echogenesis Book 3, page 9
“We were too busy trying to stay alive,” the older Traynor snapped. “Amit is an astonishingly smart man,” he continued, “but also something of an idiot savant. If he comes with us, we’ll end up spending half our time trying to keep him from getting himself killed. And there are many, many other things out there apart from the Howlers, gentlemen, that can kill him.”
A muscle twitched in his doppelgänger’s cheek. “He has a point,” he said to Sam.
The younger Sam stared hard at the older man for several long seconds, then looked away. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll talk to Amit.” He stood. “We leave in five minutes. Joshua’s put together some supplies for us, and Kevin Amaro is bringing the truck out and around in front of the lander.”
Some of the tension left the older Traynor’s muscles. It was a small victory, but one that could lead to greater things.
For now, his young doppelgänger was staring off into a corner, clearly lost in thought. Throughout the interrogation, he had kept an eye on the younger man, and from time to time, when he momentarily let his guard down, he had a look about him that reminded his older counterpart of veterans of the second Korean civil war: men whose minds had been damaged by the horrors they witnessed during the siege of Pyongyang.
What happened to him? the older Traynor wondered. Then Sam beckoned to him to follow him, and he followed them both out of the bay.
But really, he knew, the question was what happened to me?
Once outside, Joshua handed the older Traynor a light backpack containing a metal canister of water and printed food supplies, and another two identical backpacks to Sam and the younger Traynor. The truck—impossibly new and shiny-looking—stood waiting just under one wing of the lander.
The older Traynor followed Sam to the truck, doing his best to ignore the piercing stares of the rest of them. Damn, but they all looked like children!
Amit stood by the truck, shifting from foot to foot. “While you’re gone,” he told Sam, “I’m going to run diagnostics on the fuel system to calculate exactly how far our lander can fly.” He glanced nervously at the older Traynor. “Just as a precautionary measure.”
In case none of us come back, the older Traynor knew he meant. Now that he thought about it, that information could come in very useful indeed.
Sam gave Amit an approving look. “Good idea.” Then he threw his backpack into the truck and followed it inside.
EIGHT
SAM
Piper Rubin was their sole guard as they all slept together in the Town Hall. She stood near the door with her back to the wall. Sam, who was only pretending to sleep, could see she was on the verge of falling asleep herself. The barrel of her rifle had begun to droop, as had her head.
The sky outside the window was dark enough Sam figured it was about the middle of the night. All around him, people snored or did their best to sleep on mats gathered from people’s homes.
Until a few minutes before, Karl Gaballo had been sharing guard duties with Piper. Then they’d spoken to each other in whispers, and Karl had departed.
Bad idea, he thought, leaving just one of them to guard ten people. It had been two days since he’d woken to find Traynor’s knife at his throat, and he wondered if Piper or indeed any of the rebels had managed to sleep in all that time.
He suspected they had not.
Moving as slowly as possible, he raised his head enough he could try to estimate just how many steps it would take to close the gap between himself and Piper before she had a chance to bring her rifle to bear on him—assuming he could keep from stumbling over any of his sleeping friends in the process.
Three seconds is all it would take, he figured; but if he were to act, it had to be now, before Karl returned. And Piper’s reflexes must be all shot to hell…
Just as he began to raise himself up on one elbow, a hand grabbed hold of the back of Sam’s shoulder. At first he froze, then slowly turned his head to see Ethan’s eyes fixed on him from where he lay on his own mat.
Ethan shook his head and leaned in close to Sam’s ear. “Florence,” he hissed.
Sam’s lips thinned. Then he nodded tightly and lowered himself back down, still keeping a watchful eye on Piper.
Ethan was right, of course; Traynor had Florence locked up elsewhere on the mesa, with the promise she’d die if Kim didn’t do exactly what he was told. Not that there were that many places Florence could be—the mesa was only so big, after all. And there was no reason to think the same threat didn’t extend to the rest of them, should they attempt to overpower their guards and fail.
The door swung open and Karl stepped back inside with Sam’s granddaughter, Anna, cradled in his arms. The young woman’s head lolled on her shoulders, although she appeared conscious, and in that moment she looked far younger and frailer than she was.
All around him, people began to stir. The sight of Anna looking so desperately vulnerable triggered something deep in Sam’s chest, and now he did stand, stepping past Morgan and Irish.
“Hey.” Piper, who had snapped to when Karl entered, brought her rifle to bear on him. “Easy, Newman.”
“Let me see Anna,” he said. He turned and gestured to Ethan, who had stood as well. “Or let him take a look at her. For God’s sake, Piper!”
“She’s fine,” said Piper, fixed Sam with a glare. “There’s no point in her being all the way over there on the other side of the island.”
Then Sam noticed a third rebel loitering by the open door—Sean Traynor. Sam hadn’t set eyes on him more than a few times, and usually at a considerable distance, since the rebels had all been expelled from the mesa. He was older now, with a beaten-down expression and a noticeable limp. He held Angelina by her arm, and as he watched, Sean led her inside.
And as for Traynor—where was he? He seemed to have disappeared almost as soon as he’d led his people onto the mesa.
“What the hell?” Ethan demanded, stabbing a finger toward Karl as he bent to lay Anna on an unoccupied mat. “Do you people not understand the meaning of the word quarantine?”
“Sit back down,” said Piper, her voice flat and toneless.
Karl stood back up, pulling his rifle from his shoulder and checking it was loaded. Sean did the same with his own rifle, but he looked much more ill at ease than the two other rebels. The three of them watched impassively as Irish, along with Morgan—Sun and Kevin’s daughter—went to Angelina’s aid, guiding her to the rear of the hall where another mat awaited. Joon and Danny, Anna’s parents, had gone immediately to her side, whispering agitatedly to each other and casting dour glances at the rebels.
“No,” Ethan spat. “Anna is my patient and I’m her doctor. So how about you get out of my way?”
Piper glanced uneasily at Karl, who shrugged.
“Go on,” Piper said reluctantly.
Ethan moved quickly to Anna’s side, shooing her parents away.
Sam supposed it was a sign of progress that Anna at least appeared able to focus on her surroundings as Ethan spoke quietly with her, peeling back one of her eyelids.
“I want an explanation,” Sam said to Piper. “Why did you break their quarantine again?”
Piper’s lip curled in disgust. “They look well enough to me.”
“Really?” Ethan stood back up and glared at her. “Tell me—how well did Sparrowhawk look before he died, Piper?”
Piper stared back at him in shock. Karl’s face twisted into a snarl and he started to move toward the doctor.
“Fuck you,” said Karl, pushing Ethan hard in the chest.
“No,” said Ethan, holding his ground, “fuck you. If you people hadn’t tried to steal those damn bio-samples, he’d still be alive. So would the other one. And we wouldn’t have risked losing our own people as well!”
Everyone’s attention was on the two men—including Piper, Sam saw. With a start, Sam realised Ethan was trying to create a distraction.
He glanced at Irish and Joshua, and saw they’d figured out the same thing. They had one shot at this—one chance to take the mesa back.
Sam took a step toward Piper. Karl, he realised for the first time, had left his rifle’s safety catch on. It was a dumb mistake to make, but maybe not surprising if Karl and the rest of the rebels had been running on empty for days. Sean, by contrast, didn’t concern Sam: the man looked completely out of his depth.
“What the hell,” someone cried out, “is that?”
Sam froze in place. He looked around and saw Joon’s attention had moved away from the confrontation to one of the windows.
Sam looked that way in time to see something small and winged smack hard against the rough glass. Whatever it was, it spun in a hazy circle, then tumbled out of sight.
Then came more of the creatures, many of them flickering with light. They tumbled down past the glass like brightly-burning snow.
Sam realised he could smell smoke.
With that, the confrontation was over, rebels and mesa-dwellers alike staring toward the windows.
Stepping up close to the glass, Sam saw that one of the trees lining the edge of the mesa was burning—as was the roof of a wooden building across from the Town Hall.
“Burner-ticks,” Joon said almost wonderingly. “We never get burner-ticks up here.”
Stepping back, Sam looked up at the ceiling. A few faint wisps of smoke drifted just below it. It seemed like countless numbers of the things were tumbling out of the skies all across the mesa…and setting alight everything they touched.
Something crashed down onto the ceiling from above. One corner of the ceiling sagged, and a few small, bright cinders spun lazily down from a crack that hadn’t been there a moment before.
“Out!” Joshua shouted, waving at the door. “Everybody get the hell out before the place collapses on us!”
I don’t think it’s any safer out there than in here, Sam wanted to say, but the words lodged in his throat. Inside, or outside—what did it matter?
Everything was going to burn.
Piper brandished her rifle, but her expression made it clear she knew matters were already out of her control. The people inside the Town Hall surged toward the exit in their panic, ignoring her and the two other rebels.
Then Piper, too, fled, closely followed by Karl and then Sean.
Sam meanwhile headed toward Anna, but Ethan had already lifted her in his arms. Irish was with Angelina, guiding her back outside.
They were the last ones out. As soon as he stepped into the open air, Sam heard a mournful howling rising from the forest below.
If ever there was a sound that filled him with dread, that was it. How many of them must be gathered down there to be able to raise such a cacophony—thousands? More?
Suddenly, the mesa felt like a far from adequate shelter. The roof of the comms hut was burning almost out of control. DeWitt, Kevin and Morgan worked frantically to drag equipment out of the hut before it could be destroyed.
A burner-tick landed on Sam’s shoulder. He frantically brushed it away just as his shirt began to smoulder and blacken, sending a thrill of pain deep into his skin.
A seemingly infinite number of burner-ticks danced through the night like brightly flickering confetti, burning everything they touched. Off in the distance, their half-gutted lander rose above the rooftops of their tiny settlement, its hull silhouetted against the night sky. Burner-ticks drifted down its sides to the ground.
Sam looked up as something passed overhead before crashing to the ground a few dozen metres from where he stood: a woven sphere at least a metre across, made, or so it seemed to him, from carefully-threaded twigs and vines.
It exploded the moment it hit the ground, pieces of twig and vine flying everywhere. A cloud of burner-ticks rose up from within it, some of them already sparking with fire as they spun through the air.
Some flew toward him and he staggered back, pressing his back against the side of Town Hall. He could feel intense heat radiating from within the building, and when he looked up, the roof was thoroughly ablaze.
If they’d delayed their escape by even a few more seconds…
He moved away quickly. A few minutes later he saw another woven sphere come sailing down onto the settlement, spilling more burner-ticks from its interior.
Long ago, Amit had told him how burner-ticks were an essential part of the forest’s life-cycle, burning vast swathes of the forest to allow for new growth. Their exothermic properties, he had suggested, provided an evolutionary advantage by clearing the area of potential predators.
What Sam also knew was that it took very little to get them sufficiently agitated that they burst into flames. Sticking a few in a jar and giving it a good shake was usually more than enough.
“Sam!”
He started as a hand grabbed him by the shoulder, twisting him around. He found himself face to face with Danny.
“The orbiter!” Danny shouted. “It’s burning!”
Ethan’s son let go of him and ran back the way he’d come. Despite the heat of the flames, cold wrapped itself around Sam’s heart.
The orbiter.
If they lost that, they lost everything.
He followed after Danny, panic tightening his chest until he rounded a corner and saw vast clouds of black smoke rising up from their crop fields. Far off at the other end of the mesa, the barn looked like it had survived. Closer to hand, hundreds of burner-ticks clung both to the orbiter’s hull and to the gantry supporting it.
A wooden gantry. The upper part of which had already been part-consumed by flames.
Even as Sam watched, pieces of burning wood fell from the gantry, which had started to list on one side. Joshua had climbed part of the way up what remained of the gantry, using his shirt to beat uselessly at the bugs even as they alighted. Wardell Brooks meanwhile scooped up handfuls of dirt before flinging them with equal effect at the burner-ticks clinging to the orbiter’s hull.
Joshua looked over at Sam as he approached and pointed wildly out into the darkness. “Sam! It’s the Cents—I don’t know how they’re doing it, but they did this!”
The gantry listed further—and now, so did the orbiter itself. So many of the components that had been used to construct it were completely irreplaceable, either carefully scavenged from ancient derelicts or taken from Traynor through barter.
Even though the risk of losing the orbiter represented an existential crisis to them all, mesa-dweller and rebel alike, it felt to Sam as if there were something else he had forgotten about—something vital. As much damage as this attack could do to them—as much damage as it was clearly doing—there was no clear or immediate benefit to the Cents that—
Then it hit him.
“The drawbridge!” Sam shouted up at Joshua.
Joshua looked back down at him, clearly confused. “What about it?”
There were only two ways on or off the mesa: the drawbridge, or the secret ladder system hidden in a crevice above the river rapids skirting the base of the mesa.
Ever since they had constructed this secret means of access, following the expulsion of the rebels, Sam had been afraid that the rebels would learn of the ladder system’s existence. When, a few nights before, he had woken to find Traynor’s knife at his throat, Sam had feared exactly that had happened. Only slowly had it dawned on him that Traynor and his people had instead scaled the cliffs barehanded, blissfully unaware of an alternate, and far simpler, route they could have taken.
And this implied neither Sun nor her husband had bothered to inform Traynor of its existence. The only reason Sam had been able to think of was that they both, rightly, suspected they could trust Traynor only so far.
But if the Cents found a way to breach the drawbridge while Sam and the rest of his people were being held at gunpoint, they were finished.
“Wardell!” Sam shouted over at the rebel. “Who the fuck is guarding the drawbridge?”
Wardell stopped to turn and look at him, still holding handfuls of dirt. “I was.”
“Who else is guarding it?”
“No one,” said Wardell. “It was just me.”
Sam dodged to one side as a chunk of burning wood fell from the top of the gantry, landing close by his feet. “Then what the hell are you doing here?”
“Hey!” Wardell shouted back at him. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Newman, you’re not in charge anymore. And what are you doing out of the Town Hall?”
“It’s burning down, you stupid bastard!” Sam raged at him. “If I’m not in charge, then who the fuck is? Because I don’t see Traynor anywhere. From the moment you people forced your way back up here, everything’s gone to shit!”
Wardell’s lips tightened into a thin line. Then his eyes flicked toward his rifle, lying in the dust where he’d dropped it.
Before he could make a move for it, Sam stepped up closer to him. “Now you listen to me,” he said. “That drawbridge is our single point of vulnerability. We need someone guarding it around the clock. Whether it’s one of you or one of us doesn’t matter, because if those things break through, we are all dead. Do you understand?”
Before Wardell could reply, the air was filled with an ear-splitting crash as the upper part of the gantry came apart and tumbled to the ground. Joshua leapt down and out of its way, hitting the ground hard and rolling with the impact.
Then the orbiter, too, began to topple, seeming to pause for a single, unending moment before finally slamming into the dirt, sending burning splinters of wood flying through the air.
That’s it, thought Sam, staring appalled at the wreckage. There’s no coming back from this.
Part of him wanted to go back into his hut and lie down and close his eyes. Then he realised he wasn’t sure if it was still standing. From what he could see, it looked like half of the settlement was ablaze.
Instead, he hurried over to Joshua’s side and helped him to his feet. “You okay? That was a heck of a jump.”
“I don’t think I broke anything,” said Joshua. He surveyed the ruins of the orbiter, his face as white as a sheet and his breath ragged. Dirt and ash streaked his skin, and he was bleeding at one temple, although the cut didn’t look serious. “A little shook-up, maybe.” He dragged his gaze away from the orbiter to look at Sam. “What do we do now?”
