Ashfall Prophecy, page 18
I’d always thought that Rafe’s attempt at re-creating a small town on Denza was phony as hell, but it somehow looked even weirder with actual people around. They were like actors on a set waiting for a scene to start. From the looks of things, Rafe’s rebellious humans didn’t really know what to do with themselves.
Of course, we became the main attraction as we made our way up the road to Rafe’s pizzeria. It was like walking into a party late, where everyone had already been hanging out for a while. Some of the humans nodded or waved, but most of them just stared. A few of them even came together to exchange quiet words.
“Yeah,” Hiram barked. “Get a good look.”
Until the moment he spoke, I hadn’t realized that the humans were paying more attention to Hiram than to Darcy and me.
They noticed the hitch in his step. The limp.
Since leaving Earth, they’d probably never seen an injured human.
“Ignore them,” I said quietly. Hiram gritted his teeth and kept going.
Rafe Butler met us in the street outside his restaurant. Despite leading a revolt that threatened to upend life on the entire planet, Rafe didn’t look all that changed. The hairy little dude was still dressed like an overworked pizza maker, his flour-crusted apron slung under his belly. I guess with all these humans hanging around, Rafe probably had more customers than he’s seen in a long time. He grinned when he saw us and spread his arms wide.
“There they are!” Rafe bellowed, loud enough so the others could hear. “The heroes of the human race! The brave cadets who traveled to the edge of the galaxy in the name of enlightenment!”
So that’s how Rafe was framing our trip to Ashfall. Noticeably, he didn’t mention that we’d gone on the run and he had to pull out all the stops to bring us back home.
Darcy, of course, went straight into Rafe’s arms for a bear hug. While that was going on, I cut to the chase.
“Where’s Marie Reno?” I asked, making like Rafe and pitching my voice loud enough for the bystanders. “Where’s Aela?”
Rafe’s jovial act slipped for a moment as he shot me a look and raised a hand to indicate I should shut up.
“There aren’t many places on this planet for a woman like Marie to hide,” Rafe said quietly. “We’ll find her and your lost crewmate. That’s my promise.”
“So you don’t know,” I replied.
“My people located her shuttle an hour ago, but she was gone,” Rafe said. “Is that enough of a status report for you, Sydney?”
I glanced over my shoulder at all the humans, most of who were still watching us. “Why don’t you send some of them out to look?”
“There are only some of our people that I trust with a difficult matter like Marie,” Rafe replied. I could see he was making an effort to keep his tone even. “Believe it or not, I know what I’m doing. I . . .” He trailed off as his gaze shifted to Hiram for the first time. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you standing like that?”
Hiram had been standing hunched, with his bad leg slightly cocked. He’d opted to wear one of his institute uniforms down to Denza, which means he wasn’t rocking the special pants Zara had scored him back on the Torrent.
“Don’t worry about me, Gramps,” Hiram responded. “I’m good.”
Rafe took Hiram roughly by the jaw, turned his face from side to side, and then shoved him backward a bit. Hiram winced in pain. “You don’t look good, boy.”
“Rafe, come on,” Darcy said. “He got hurt.”
“Hurt,” Rafe repeated the word like it was in a foreign language. “You can’t be hurt.”
Hiram looked down at his feet. “Thanks for the concern and shit.”
Rafe’s lips curled back in an expression of utter digust. He looked from me to Darcy, like we were to blame. Which, well, I guess I kind of was. Hiram had taken a bullet intended for me.
“And you paraded him up here with no thought of how that might look?” Rafe asked. “Leave it to you, Hiram, to be the first human crippled since the invasion.”
“Hey, we didn’t ask to be brought here,” I said, stepping between Hiram and Rafe. “You hijacked our ship, and now you’re forcing us to participate in whatever this is—your invasion of Denza.”
“Invasion . . . ?” Rafe glanced up at the ships hovering in the sky and chuckled. “I suppose it might look like that, but I’m not invading anywhere. Our plans to retake the Earth died with your father, and I would never presume to challenge our gracious hosts. No, I don’t want this world, Sydney. They might not know it yet, but the Denzans are going to give us a new one.”
20
The four of us squeezed into a booth at Rafe’s empty pizzeria, a cooling cheese pie that not even Hiram would touch on the table. What a dorky place to potentially start a war from. Above us, a projector attached to the restaurant’s ceiling produced a rotating hologram of a planet.
“Illaria,” Rafe said, naming the world as he smiled up at its image, his eyes shining. “Discovered by the Serpo Institute twenty-three years ago. A garden world. A unicorn.”
Rafe ran us through the rest of the details. Illaria was slightly larger than Earth, with three jagged landmasses separated by sprawling oceans. According to the institute’s report, an ice age had loosed its grip on Illaria an estimated five hundred years prior, and so far life had only advanced to the low primate stage. The atmosphere was perfect for humanity. A single moon kept the tides in check.
I was sort of amazed how quickly Rafe had moved on from his scheme to save Earth from itself with an army of enhanced humans cured of the Wasting. My mom had told me about that one before I even left for Denza, which meant Rafe had been working on it for decades. Years of planning were down the toilet, but Rafe didn’t seem at all unsettled. In fact, he looked hyped. He must have had this planet—Illaria—in his back pocket the whole time.
“You think the Denzans are just going to give you this planet?” I asked when Rafe finally finished running down all of Illaria’s features. “It’s that easy?”
“Well, Sydney, I suppose that depends on our negotiating position,” Rafe replied. “Which is why I need the three of you to tell me everything that happened on Ashfall.”
I crossed my arms and leaned back. This dude had put a bounty out on us and brought us back to Denza against our will. And now he wanted our help? I was about to tell him to kick rocks, but then the non-idiot part of my brain took over. Even if I held out, Darcy would tell Rafe everything. But if I played ball, maybe I could learn what Rafe’s plans were. Sticking close to him might be the best place for me to be if I wanted to head off conflict between humanity and Denzans. Plus, I wanted to make sure he was serious about shutting down Reno and getting Aela back safe.
Still, I couldn’t just roll over. Wouldn’t have been in character.
“I’m not telling you shit until you let the rest of our crew go,” I said. “That’s my negotiating position.”
“I’m not holding anyone prisoner, Syd,” Rafe said with a hand draped across his heart. “I’ll have them woken up immediately and returned to the institute. You have my word.”
Well, it was better than nothing. Rafe peppered the three of us with questions, beginning with our arrival on Ashfall. I kept my answers short and to the point and sometimes missed details that Darcy or Hiram had to fill in. I honestly wasn’t trying to hold out on Rafe—although that’s probably what he thought. I was distracted by the rotating hologram of Illaria. The blue planet tickled something in the back of my mind, like I’d seen it before. Maybe my consciousness had zipped by it during one of my runs in the Wayscope.
“You were shot before you even made it into the temple,” Rafe said, staring hard at Hiram. “Goofing around, I bet. Not taking the search and recovery seriously.”
“I was taking it seriously,” Hiram replied. “What are you giving me shit for? I didn’t even know I could be shot.”
“I raised you too soft,” Rafe said, shaking his head. “Like your father, you have no concept of consequences.”
I glanced at Darcy to see if she was going to say anything, but she was too busy studying the piece of congealing pizza in front of her. When it came to Hiram getting ragged on by Rafe, she stayed out of it.
“I was lucky to have Hiram with me,” I said. “When Reno attacked the Eastwood . . .”
Rafe waved me off. “What are we supposed to do with you now, boy?” He leaned across the table to try to look in Hiram’s eyes, but Hiram kept his chin down. “At a time when we should all be unified, the very sight of you sends fear and uncertainty through the entire population. My own grandson. Pathetic.”
“I don’t have to listen to this crap,” Hiram said and stood up. “I’m going home.”
Before Hiram could storm off, Rafe grabbed his wrist. Hiram tried to yank it away, but Rafe held firm, veins popping out in his forearm as he squeezed. The two of them stared at each other for a moment before Rafe finally let go.
“Go out the back way,” he said. “Don’t want the others to see you limping.”
Hiram made a noise in his throat like he was stifling a scream. He did as he was told, though, the swinging door to the kitchen banging against the wall as he exited.
“You could be kinder to him,” Darcy said quietly.
“I think maybe I’ve been too kind,” Rafe replied.
I snorted. “If that’s your version of kindness, I can see why his mom went back to Earth.”
Yeah.
So, I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. The first thing to break the silence that followed was the sharp snap caused by Rafe squeezing the edge of the table hard enough that the Formica cracked.
“By the tides, Syd,” Darcy murmured.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was low.”
Rafe just stared at me. His face was a blank mask—not furious, which made it more frightening. Slowly, very slowly, like controlling the muscles in his face required a greater effort than he’d expended damaging the table, he managed to plaster on a patient smile.
“This substance that was capable of injuring my grandson, you said there was a stockpile on Ashfall,” Rafe said, like nothing had happened.
Part of me was relieved that Rafe let my thoughtless remark slide. But another part of me sort of enjoyed knowing that he wasn’t unflappable. He had weak spots like the rest of us. He wasn’t always in control.
“Yeah, my father . . .” I paused. “The Panalax Ool’Vinn, I mean, he was protecting it.”
“Did you bring back any samples?”
Here was something that I didn’t want to be completely honest about. “No.”
“Zara stole at least some of the stuff,” Darcy said. “She used it against Reno.”
Of course, Darcy had snitched like I expected, so I filled in the rest of the story. “We ran out of sedatives after Ashfall. We needed a resupply, so we traded what Zara had taken.”
“Traded it? With who?” Even as he was asking these questions, I saw a chuckle bubble up from Rafe’s belly. “Don’t answer that. You were in the Jeuna system. You visited the Torrent.”
“Wait,” I said. “You know about that place?”
“Of course,” Rafe replied. “Those Vulpin have been good trading partners for me over the years. Helped me to acquire technology that the Denzans weren’t necessarily forthcoming with. Who’s in charge there these days? Has Ezziah been assassinated yet?”
“Nope, she’s still the boss,” I said. Now that Rafe mentioned it, I realized how similar the build of Ezziah’s mech body was to a Battle-Anchor. It seemed like both of them had benefited from their trades over the years.
“And Darcy, you were able to track the Eastwood based on an assumption about an Etherazi sighting,” Rafe said. “What else happened in Jeuna, Syd? Did you have another encounter with one of those beasts?”
I hesitated for a moment, not sure how much I should divulge of what Arkell and the Merciful Rampart were doing in the far reaches of space. Of course, with that little hitch, I gave myself away. And whatever—Arkell was far from a pal; I wasn’t going to keep his secrets.
“Not exactly,” I said. “We bumped into a ship called the Cavern. They—”
“Wait . . .” Rafe squinted like he was trying to remember something. “Theoretician Ayadora, right?”
I shook my head. “Goddamn, is there anyone in the universe you don’t know?”
Rafe flashed a smile that was genuinely pleased, which, after the dead stare I’d gotten a few seconds ago, actually made me feel pretty good. I didn’t entirely trust Rafe, but even when he was a prick it wasn’t easy to dislike him. I remembered the lecture I’d taken last semester where he’d hypnotized the entire room with his war stories. He was magnetic, and his approval could feel like sunshine. I needed to be careful or else I’d get as sucked in by him as Darcy.
“She’s one of my favorite crackpots,” Rafe said. “Blinded herself. Aged herself thirty years. All in the name of some cockamamie project.”
“Yeah, well, it worked,” I replied. “They captured an Etherazi.”
“Are you serious?!” Darcy exclaimed. “They can . . . they can be captured?”
“Now, that is an interesting wrinkle,” Rafe said, leaning back and crossing his arms. “I suppose the Merciful Rampart believes that renders our presence on Denza superfluous.”
“You got it,” I replied.
At last, Rafe breathed out a sigh and picked up a slice of his own pizza. I assumed that meant the interrogation was over.
“The Denzan Senate wants to talk to you,” he said to me. “I’ll arrange a meeting in a couple days, once you’ve had a chance to rest.”
“To me?” I asked. “What am I supposed to tell them?”
Rafe shrugged. “Exactly what you told me. There’s no reason not to be honest with them, Sydney. We shouldn’t have any secrets between our species.”
After all that, Rafe put me up in a one-bedroom cottage on the edge of the town. It was a distinctly Earth-ish place, somebody’s little woodsy getaway—a living room with a checker-print couch, a simple kitchen, a fireplace. The back porch of the house looked out on the forest that filled the center of the island, and, at night, through the trees, I could see the glow of the monument to the First Twelve, which was always kept lit.
The house was freshly cleaned, the sheets on the bed recently changed, but it still had that lingering, dusty smell like no one had been inside for a long time. I quickly discovered why.
There were pictures of my mom on the mantel.
This had been my grandfather’s house.
I was still coming off the hyperspeed sedatives and felt pretty foggy, so I must have stood dumbfounded in front of the fireplace for a solid hour, like a caveman discovering his first art gallery. There was a photo of my grandfather as a young man—handsome, an easy smile—posing in his NASA jumpsuit. In another, he tipped his head back to laugh while holding a wailing baby that had to be my mom. There was a shot of my mom at around age eight, peeking into a telescope.
And—yikes—there was a picture of young Marie Reno in a bikini, stretched out across a towel on a Denzan beach, fingering down her sunglasses and blowing a kiss to my grandfather, the photographer.
I tipped that one down.
All those photos of my grandfather’s life on Earth, his wife and daughter, and yet he’d still come to Denza. He’d spent a good chunk of his life here before deciding to finally go home, where he let himself die from the Wasting. In all the pictures, he looked so happy, so perfectly happy. But there must have been something off inside of him, right? To leave his family on Earth, to go back there only to die. What drove someone to make decisions like that?
There were a few other relics of my grandfather’s left in the cottage. A half-empty glass bottle of cologne from the ’80s. A shelf filled with boring old-man books about navy battles. A collection of medals from the US Air Force and NASA mounted in a glass case. I wondered why he hadn’t bothered to bring those back to Earth with him. Maybe, at the end, he’d grown to resent the life trajectory that had brought him to Denza. Or maybe after fending off an invasion from extradimensional monsters, some little chunks of tin and ribbon didn’t seem so important anymore.
I spent a couple days recovering from space travel, tossing and turning in my grandfather’s bed. Of course, I dreamed. My subconscious had no chill. In the one I remembered, we were all out to dinner at a fancy restaurant—my grandfather, young and vibrant like in the photographs; my dad, wearing an overlarge pair of sunglasses to hide the patches of white mold growing around his eyes; my mom, constantly looking over her shoulder and nearly lunging out of her seat anytime a waiter passed by. As the courses arrived, one by one, my family made some excuse, got up from the table, and left. Pretty soon, I was alone at the table with a bunch of plates of cold food.
Didn’t exactly need to be Freud to unpack that one.
By the second afternoon in the cottage, I was starting to get antsy. Conveniently, the communicator was malfunctioning, so I had no way of checking in with the institute to see if Rafe had made good on his promise to release the rest of my crew. The cottage didn’t feel like a prison, but I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to leave.
I took one of my grandfather’s books out on the porch and pretended to read. I was actually looking for patterns, something I’d picked up from mom during our travels. Sure enough, a pair of humans walked by every hour. They smiled and waved like they were just out for a stroll, but I knew that they were Rafe’s people sent to check on me.
At hour four, when one of the couples repeated, I set my book aside and waved them down.
“You guys sure like wandering around,” I said.
“And you sure like pretending to read,” replied the man, a middle-aged guy wearing the uniform of one of the stolen ships hanging overhead.
“So, what’s the deal?” I asked. “What are you supposed to do if I’m not here? If I decide to run?”
