Take Back the Sky Read online

  “Fuck ’em all,” Jacobi says as she bounces along the bottom of the cage.

  “Just passing it along,” DJ says and slides against the mesh without benefit of a mat. He grips the thick wire with his fingers and hangs on. “Some fucking hamster ball, ain’t it?”

  I lie back beside him, stretch out my arms, and stare toward the center of the cage. DJ joins Kumar and some of the others in pretending to sleep. Being hooked in by the tea isn’t easy on either of us. I hope it doesn’t leave mental scars to match the ones from our lobster suits.

  There’s now a faint suggestion of g-force. We seem to be accelerating. What can this ship do? What kind of maneuvering? How fast, with what kind of power?

  I can’t drift off. I let go of the mesh. DJ follows. Borden and DJ and I join in another daisy, gripping hands and pulling our heads almost together. Our feet impact softly against the cage.

  Jacobi swings by and grabs a hand from Borden.

  “What do you know about this ship?” Borden asks DJ and me.

  “Not much,” I say. “Bird Girl’s not very consistent at keeping us informed.” I tell them about the apparent connection between our Gurus and their Keepers.

  “What the hell are Keepers?”

  “Their Gurus,” DJ concurs.

  “This whole war was arranged and coached on both teams?” Jacobi says.

  “We knew that,” Borden says.

  This sobers them, but in fact nobody seems very surprised. “Awkward communication could be to our advantage,” I say. “As the weak partners in this dance, DJ and I should listen close and hope for more embarrassing revelations.”

  Borden looks at us with some surprise. “Strategic thinking?” she asks. I smile, showing my teeth.

  Now Joe is with us. Not many of us can sleep. “Vinnie always thinks strategically,” he says.

  “Whatever’s out there scares the hell out of the Antags,” I say. “They need to take control, but they don’t know how. And it all seems to involve Keepers. Gurus. Whatever.”

  “Wonder if that explains where Mushran is?” Borden asks. That hadn’t occurred to me, but the idea gains no traction in ignorance.

  “Where are they planning to go?” Jacobi asks.

  “No idea,” I say.

  “There’s something they call Sun-Planet,” DJ says, and I give him a severe look. He’s getting ahead of what I’m comfortable speculating on.

  “What the hell is Sun-Planet?” Borden asks.

  “Still collating,” I say.

  “It’s way out there,” DJ says. “Could be Planet X.”

  Joe and Borden frown.

  “Planet X,” he says, about to launch into that story, but they raise their hands and he cuts himself off.

  Do I truly understand the import of that basketball-on-felt diagram Bird Girl fed me earlier? She doesn’t seem to remember Sun-Planet in any detail. She’s got textbook knowledge, nothing sensual or immediate. I wonder if she’s ever been there.

  “Anything else?” Joe asks.

  I hold back a few subliminal impressions because I’m not sure they make sense. Antag family structure? Something important is missing, but maybe about to arrive. “They’re way below strength. Maybe only thirty or forty Antags, not including the bats.”

  “Got that,” Borden says.

  “I saw some squids,” Joe says. “Did you see them, too?”

  “Yeah,” Jacobi says. “Haven’t seen them since, and I wasn’t sure I saw them the first time.”

  “What about the hunters out here in orbit?” Borden asks. “Ours and theirs—Box and the rest?”

  “Doesn’t seem to be their biggest worry,” I say.

  To my relief, the group breaks up to return to exercising.

  Every few hours, three or four bats show up with a tank and a hose and let loose a spray of water. The spray cuts a tangent across one side of the sphere. We wash in it, drink from it, or simply avoid it.

  More hours. Nature takes its course.

  “Dignity in the Corps!” Joe calls out. “We get to crap behind blankets.”

  Exactly right. Nobody’s much embarrassed, but we hold up the mats for individual privacy.

  After a couple of hours, the bats lob fist-sized green balls through the hatch. I grab one and bite into it. It’s dry and yeasty, slightly salty, slightly sweet. The others see my tacit approval and grab their own.

  The lights go down every thirty hours. That leaves those of us who are still not sleepy to cling to the mesh or bump into one another.

  ROTATIONS

  Jacobi specializes in light martial arts, Borden in building strength. The Russians exercise separately and keep busy trying to catch Litvinov unprepared. Our respect for the colonel grows. Polkovnik is equivalent to a colonel in the Skyrines. He must be twice the age of the others, especially Bilyk, a skinny but wiry opponent. Litvinov experiences a lot of bruising, some bleeding, but no broken bones, and sluices every time he gets a chance, urging his soldiers to do the same.

  We need distraction and information, and for the time being nobody outside is talking and nobody or nothing within me or DJ is volunteering new facts, which I find both peaceful and like another little death. Can’t put up with ignorance much longer, but Joe and Borden and Litvinov and Kumar (I think) are maintaining, and so is DJ, and so will I. But we can’t maintain forever.

  Still, compared to the cans, this is a real improvement.

  One big question—if this isn’t an Antag ship, and not a human ship, why is there pressure, a breathable atmosphere? Who designed the lights? Who’s controlling?

  And how did the Antags know to dock their vessels in empty space, find that hangar, and get us on board?

  Something obvious I’m just missing, and it’s pissing me off.

  DIVISION FOUR

  Jacobi and Ishikawa take Ishida and Tak off to one wall of the cage, where they grip in a four-petal flower and quietly talk. Kumar watches from his curled position across the cage. He’s saying little but tracking everything, especially Litvinov’s exercises.

  Then the flower breaks and Ishida crosses the perimeter of the cage. She adjusts her tack by changing her center of gravity like a circus gymnast. Impressive.

  Then she spreads her arms and legs to slow her spin and glides up beside Kumar.

  “Tell us about Division Four,” she says. The former Wait Staffer turns his head to stare back at her, and blinks. The gouges and scars along her formerly polished body parts, added to the pink lines of withdrawn wires and other scars on her flesh, give her a fierce, tattered look that’s more than a little scary.

  And maybe a little sexy.

  I hope we’re not coming apart. I have to admit that before we landed on Mars, and after, I thought she was kind of awesome, but none of that matters now. I just want all of us to be allowed to keep it together, stay sane, fight again.

  Win this time.

  Kumar seems to relax and relent. He waves for us to gather around. DJ wakes up, extends an arm, and marches with his hands along the mesh to join the condensing pack. Borden seems to materialize beside Joe. Litvinov and the Russians, including Ulyanova, arrive last.

  Kumar’s voice is low and hoarse. For the moment, it seems we’ve got back some of our cohesion—but who knows? It all depends on how much Kumar feels the need to keep us ignorant.

  “None of you, possibly excepting Master Sergeant Venn, has ever met a Guru or had much to do with Wait Staff until recently—correct?” Kumar asks.

  Litvinov says, “Russians give Wait Staff tours, on Mars. Starshina was there.”

  “Ah,” Kumar says. “Perhaps she will contribute?”

  Ulyanova doesn’t react.

  “The commander’s hung out with you guys, hasn’t she?” Jacobi asks, referring to Borden. Borden keeps her eyes on Kumar but says nothing—possibly waiting for him to reveal something she doesn’t know.

  “Just me, until she met Mushran,” Kumar says. “She was not involved in political decisions on Earth or elsewhe
re until the last few months. What I am approaching, on a roundabout, is describing to you what it is like to deal with Gurus and their representatives, to carry out their orders without truly understanding their goals.” He sounds as if the loss of Mushran has put all this on him and he feels the weight.

  “We’re listening,” Jacobi says.

  “Good. Listen critically,” Kumar says. “I think it will soon become important.”

  “What do Gurus look like?” Ishida asks.

  Kumar affords her another blink, then a small grin. “Do you believe I have seen them? Seen them as they really are?”

  Ishida nods intently.

  Borden says, “I know you’ve seen them.”

  “I, on the other hand, am not so sure,” Kumar says. “The Gurus who interact most with humans are about the size of a large dog. These have four walking legs and four arms, rather like canine caterpillars. Their faces are broad, with small, sensitive ears. Their eyes are large, like a lemur’s, possibly because they want us to think they’re nocturnal.

  “Whatever we thought we saw, it early became apparent to the more discerning Wait Staff that the Gurus are talented at creating illusions. They have shown themselves capable of altering both physical shape and how we see them. How much of what we have witnessed is in fact real, I do not know. I doubt anyone knows.”

  “Wait Staff fooled?” Ulyanova asks, looking up and shifting her look around the group as if to see how astonishing this might be. “You do not see from inside? Or see outside clear?”

  “I am not sure what you mean,” Kumar says.

  She smiles her strange smile and waves her hand—continue.

  “Are they ugly?” Jacobi asks.

  “We never saw them so. Usually, as I said, they appear cat- or doglike, with multiple limbs but pleasant faces, evoking a certain domestic familiarity, likely to make us feel a positive connection—to establish affection.”

  “They look like pets,” Ishikawa says.

  Kumar nods. “It is the highest privilege to be in the presence of a Guru,” he continues. “They evoke peace of mind, calmness, stability, loyalty. Neither Mushran nor I, nor our closest colleagues in Division Four, spent more than three years working with them. If you serve in the presence of Gurus for longer than three years, betrayal of any sort becomes unthinkable.”

  “But for you—thinkable?” Tak asks.

  Kumar gives a small shrug. “It was Lieutenant Colonel Joe Sanchez who brought back to Earth the first Martian settler exposed to the Drifter’s green dust.”

  “I’m right here,” Joe says. Kumar looks past him, past us, like we’re living through a bad haunted-house movie and Joe is one of the ghosts. He doesn’t trust Joe, I think. That makes me trust Joe more—for now.

  “That was five years ago,” Kumar says. “The settler was smuggled past all security in ways about which I have not been informed—perhaps because I myself still do not arouse trust.”

  “No kidding,” Jacobi says.

  Kumar is unfazed. “It was this settler who first told a select few about the ancient pieces of memory buried deep in the Drifter. At first, none of us believed, it seemed so fantastical, so opposed to the history taught us by the Gurus. There was discord in the divisions, but word slowly leaked to our top leaders, and then, we presume, to the Gurus. The settler was stolen from our care. I learned later he was executed. That was our first shame, but also the first indicator of how desperate the Gurus were to keep this information away from Earth and from our fighters.”

  “They didn’t want us to know about our origins?” I ask.

  “That may have been part of their concern. But also … the knowledge that our ancestral forms on the outer moons of the solar system—”

  “We call them bugs,” DJ says, looking grimly serious. “That’s what they were. We get used to it. Mostly.” He’s forcing the issue.

  “That’s what you see in your heads?” Borden asks.

  “Yeah,” DJ says.

  “You?” The commander looks at me.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  Ishida and Jacobi make disgusted faces. Ulyanova eyes the cage limits.

  “The bugs had long ago encountered a species like the Gurus, or the Gurus themselves, and had been led by them to fight many wars.”

  Litvinov and the Russians jerk as if they’ve been poked, perhaps realizing something significant. This may be their first hint that the Antags themselves have Gurus.

  “The Gurus are that old?” Ishida asks.

  “It seems they are. Endless wars, millions of battles, billions of deaths, before our progenitors cleared themselves of that plague.”

  “It can be done,” Joe murmurs.

  “The bugs, as you call them, settled through the outer solar system about four and a half billion years ago. They took their wars with them. That is about the time Mars and then Earth were struck by chunks of some of their moons. We think that at that time, they were divided into rigid social classes. The Gurus aggravated these divisions and set them against one another. Very soon, the bugs began to fight to preserve class and racial mixes, to exclusively honor a certain social or family unit—or some representative philosophy. Wars over philosophy, or within families, can be the most vicious and long-lasting. Their wars under the tutelage of the Gurus may have lasted a hundred and fifty million years.” He looks at me and DJ and tilts his head. “Is any of this incorrect?”

  “Not so far,” DJ says.

  Kumar seems amused that DJ should become an expert.

  “Did the bugs’ Gurus share technology with them—better weapons, better ships?” Ishida asks.

  “Their battles kept them mostly in the outer solar system and the Kuiper belt,” Kumar says. “They did not themselves visit Mars or the Earth. But yes, they seem to have been given insights to help them—but only up to a point, a carefully selected strategic point. Only enough to maintain a balance between opposing forces, with occasional swings of victory and defeat. The Gurus always try to keep things interesting. And the bugs must have fascinated their intended audiences a great deal. We are, perhaps, only a late sequel … an afterthought.” Kumar lets this sink in. “After the debriefing of three Antagonist survivors, under cover of gaining tactical knowledge about the battle situation on Mars—”

  Joe won’t meet my eyes. He’s been in on it almost from the beginning. Always coming upon surprises, always ending up in the center of action. And only telling me when I might be useful—or if, conceivably, I might get hurt if I do not know.

  “—we combined the knowledge gained from them, with the history outlined by the Muskie colonist who had been successfully exposed to Ice Moon Tea. But that was not all. Even then, we were provided with certain confirming truths by Antagonists who had reached similar conclusions, or had themselves been exposed to the green powder—like the female who speaks her mind to Master Sergeant Sanchez and Corporal Johnson. A number of these brave enemies tried to reach out and warn us. Most died at the hands of our troops—sacrificed as they tried to spread the truth.

  “Mushranji sent records of these debriefings to Division One, which promptly buried them—followed by more executions. He managed to keep himself separate from all that, to play as if he were still in the camp of those fanatically devoted to the Gurus. But he carefully enlisted and informed other Wait Staff—making sure that none he approached had spent more than three years in the presence of Gurus. That they had at least a minimal chance of being persuadable.

  “And soon, Mushranji had a large enough cadre of the informed and the like-minded that Division Four secretly split from the other divisions, from top politicians and administrators. Soon, we began planning and then directing operations on Mars to confirm the existence of the Drifter, its contents, and its effects on a number of other Martian settlers.

  “I fear that because of our tight limits, and our failures, all of you became involved in painful confusion. We were still learning, still trying to understand how we might survive this new and growi
ng base of unwelcome knowledge. Mushranji himself kept me in the dark, ignorant about certain matters, that I might play my part better. I hope he is not lost … ”

  “Antagonista take orders from Gurus, too,” Ulyanova murmurs, again with that peculiar expression—an expression of feeling pain in a place one doesn’t know one has. Her companion, Vera, sticks by her like a faithful puppy.

  Litvinov looks away and says softly to her, “We knew this must be so.”

  “We are not special!” Ulyanova says. “So many have died to be part of special.” Bilyk’s glower deepens. Did he want to be special, too, or is he just reacting to the loss of friends, the end of ideals, the loss of any real reason to fight?

  Tak echoes his dismay. “This has been going on for millions of years?” he asks. At Kumar’s nod, his expression crumples. “What kind of evil shit is that?”

  “We do not know the occasions when Gurus broadcast these wars,” Kumar says. “There may have been long gaps when old species burned themselves out, like movie stars at the ends of their box-office appeal, and new species found intelligence, only to have the Gurus arrive, or revive, and recruit them.”

  “We’re just entertainment!” Jacobi says, words sharp as flint.

  “That is the truth of it, in a nutshell,” Kumar says.

  Quiet around the group. The big picture, even the nutshell, is more than most of us can immediately process.

  “One big, bloody reality show,” DJ says with a sniff. He rubs his nose, his far gaze showing the wear he has sustained. In the second Drifter, on Mars, for a time he had been truly happy. Then that, too, had been taken from him and destroyed—by Jacobi and her team. And now we may be about to lose Bug Karnak, the ancient archive, and our steward.

  Ishikawa says, “What I want to know is, who’s paying the cable bills?”

  Nobody feels like laughing. What I feel like is punching my fist into something until it’s mush. Finding out over and over again how much of a sucker you’ve been, what your real place is in this nasty old world, is something Skyrines and other fighters should be used to …