Broken sky, p.15
Broken Sky, page 15
“Almost there,” Jack called.
A loud whine made him look back just as Dave jerked and sideswiped the rock wall, rebounding to stop with half its rear tire folded over the shelf’s edge.
Ethan seized the safety line. “What was that?”
Dave’s daytime running lights were unusually bright. “Power surge. Are you okay?”
He put his hands back on the steering wheel. “Yeah, I’m good.”
The lights faded to normal and Jack was about to resume walking when—with a sharp pop—a football-size stone flake spun out from under the rear tire and plummeted into the gorge.
Ethan heard the noise. He grabbed the rope again and pulled himself out of his seat. Dave rolled backwards and tipped as its rear wheel settled into the cavity.
“Stop,” Jack yelled. A high-pitched tone sounded from the power cell in his pocket. The truck steadied. “Keep your foot on the brake. There’s a hole behind the wheel.”
Ethan stomped on the pedal. “Do something.”
Dave was in a precarious position. If it rolled back even an inch farther, its center of mass would shift toward the unsupported rear wheel. There would be no stopping it from slipping off the ledge.
Jack spotted a sturdy-looking branch on the closest tree—a pine with a trunk more than a foot in diameter. He began twirling the winch cable, letting it slide from his grip in an ever-widening circle. After only a few rotations, he was struggling to hold on as the metal hook swooped above and below the ledge.
Another loud pop. “Do it now,” Ethan shouted.
Jack released the cable. “C’mon, c’mon,” he pleaded as the weighted end arced toward the forest. The power cell emitted another shrill tone.
The hook dropped over the branch a moment before the line went taut, then recoiled at the perfect angle to wrap around the limb several times.
He pulled the cable to make sure it was solid. “Start the winch.” Why is it doing that? The power cell had started pulsing, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Dave to check on it.
Ethan hit the switch and the motor took up the slack. The tree bent, snapped loudly, and leaned sharply toward the truck. He released the brake slowly. Dave held its position.
“Just a bit longer,” Jack pleaded. The cable had wrapped at the limb’s strongest point, near to the trunk, but the branch was only a few inches thick. The noise from the power cell was constant now.
Dave shifted. It rolled forward half an inch. Another inch. The tree groaned and bent farther. Jack tensed.
Crack. He yelped at the sound—loud as a gunshot—from his pocket.
Dave lurched backwards, but then stopped and rolled ahead. The tree would bend no farther.
Ethan scrambled onto the hood and steered the truck so close to the wall that its tires left black smudges on the rock. Then, bent awkwardly over the windshield, he began laughing—from relief—as he guided his harness along the rope while steering. Jack regretted that they couldn’t use their phones. With his butt in the air, Ethan’s selfie would not have been the machismo-look he’d been hoping for.
With his cousin safe, Jack withdrew the spare power cell from his pocket. Its connection light was out and fragments of crystal spilled from the contact port. What happened? He’d seen—and heard—crystals fail before, but only under extreme load, never when idle. The power surge? That didn’t make sense because the cell wasn’t connected to anything. There was no power flowing to be affected by a surge.
Later, as they were reassembling the roof rack, Ethan said, “That was an impressive throw. It was almost like magic the way the cable wrapped around that branch.”
“Well, if you hadn’t been so quick on the brakes, we might’ve lost Dave before I had a chance.”
“Oh? That wasn’t me. Dave stopped rolling before I hit the pedal. Does it have some sort of safety feature to keep it from rolling backwards?”
“Um, maybe.” Jack was too baffled by the unexpected failure of the power cell to recall what his parents might have told him about the truck. “But I’m not going back to find out.”
-- -- --
The road trended ever higher, mostly on the exposed face of the mountains. But Ethan also guided Dave through confined canyons with sides so steep that even the mountain goats avoided them. By late afternoon there was little evidence they followed a man-made trail at all. They traversed spurs where they picked their route based on what appeared the least treacherous. Only once did the road fork. Jack chose left, to continue climbing.
“I think we’re near the summit,” he said. “If we’re still on the right path, there should be a creek ahead. I need water.”
“What makes you think we’re at the top?”
“It had been getting cooler as we climbed, but now it’s warmer. It’s summer on the northern side of the Spine. Also, we’re going north instead of east. We should be on the Vault.”
The forest they entered was so dense Jack couldn’t tell how far it extended. Fortunately, a clear path cut through the trees, so he knew they were still going the right way. “There it is.” The creek cut across the road in a narrow, gravel-filled trench.
Ethan pulled Dave well off the path to hide it under the trees. “I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry. But I’m sort of hungry now too.”
He kneeled by the creek to refill his water bottle while Ethan unloaded the cargo box and put together a simple meal. They had just settled into their seats when all the dashboard lights went out.
Ethan started pushing buttons. “What happened?”
Jack tried the key. No response. “They disconnected the power.” He flipped open the maintenance panel and extracted a thumb-sized metal cylinder. Its LED was dark. “The source for the power cell is in the workshop. They were waiting for us there.”
Ethan jumped out and began pacing. “So, what do we do now? Do we give up, or go on foot?” He kicked a low branch off a nearby tree, then picked it up and hurled it into the woods. “We should call our parents and find out for sure what’s happening.”
“No, let’s think this through. We just have to figure out a different way to get there.” Jack removed a pair of binoculars from the cargo box and started walking. “I need a minute.”
He followed the creek downstream to a steep drop-off and peered over the edge into a narrow basin saddled between the Vault and the Mirror. After an initial near-vertical drop of sixty feet, the water tumbled another fifteen-hundred feet over the Vault’s sharp corners and angles.
Trees on either side of the creek blocked his view of anything but the forest below, but a tall outcropping of bare rock towered on his right. He found a safe route to the top and sat facing the Mirror’s relatively smooth face. Beyond that, the Spine continued to the horizon.
The sun had already slipped behind the Vault, leaving him in deep shadow. The Mirror’s upper half was still brilliantly lit, but the reflected sunlight gave him no warmth.
Maybe I should let Ethan call his parents. To find out what’s really going on.
He was certain that his own parents were not in trouble with CorpSec, and being in trouble with the real police seemed even less likely. Some people mistrusted the corporations and their security forces, but he’d always heard that these issues revolved around money. After all, most corporations on Cirrus had moved their operations from Earth to avoid taxes. Being an off-world company was the easiest way to avoid contributing to their home nation’s guaranteed income fund.
Would Ethan even know if his parents were involved in something illegal? And why had they taken different vessels to Cirrus? How had they gotten seats so quickly? Grace was an expert in computer security. So was Nathan, but he also had experience with artificial intelligence systems. Could they have planned this?
He tried putting these suspicions behind him and turned his attention to the north, the direction they needed to go. The Spine descended more steeply on that side, and the forest continued in patches down the slope and through the narrow foothills. After that, the fields and isolated forests faded into the distance. Beyond that was Caerton.
At least it’s downhill from here, Jack thought, anticipating the long walk ahead.
He leaned that direction and considered the creek that spilled into the forested saddle below. It hid among the trees in the basin but its path was obvious—the foliage was darker where there was more water.
On a larger scale, similar lines of heavy growth extended from glaciers in the Spine out into the northern plains. There, another feature caught his attention. His pulse quickened. He lifted the binoculars and focused on a large coniferous forest. Under magnification, the trees surrounded a round lake. The lake itself featured a round, tree-covered island.
Jack jumped to his feet. The crag he stood upon wasn’t as tall as the surrounding trees, but he was high enough to see that the ground was flat for much farther than it appeared from the road. He’d thought they were crossing the face of the mountain through another forested stretch, but the trail actually cut across the base of a deep, hanging valley.
He climbed down as fast as he could, stumbling at the bottom and landing in a roll. Without a pause, he sprang to his feet and sprinted back to the truck.
Ethan was eating, although not with much enthusiasm. He heard Jack running. “What’s wrong?”
Jack yelled, “Follow me,” as he ran past.
Ethan jumped from his seat. “Have they found us?”
“It’s not that. I’m just looking.”
“For what?”
“I’ll know when I find it.”
Jack weaved through the trees with Ethan following. He vaulted an egg-shaped boulder, then turned sideways to squeeze through a crack in another that was large as a bus. Soon, he reached the far edge of the woods, where the valley narrowed and the forest gave way to bare stone. A tumble of large boulders blocked his view, but the brightness above suggested a wider space beyond. The stream flowed from the top of the rocks. He started climbing.
“What are you looking for?” Ethan asked when he caught up. “Have you been here before?”
“Yes. I mean, no. I’m not sure.”
Jack reached the top where a large slab formed a shallow, overhanging shelter. There was an opening underneath—the mouth of a cave. A few trees had found decent soil among the rocks, and one stood directly in front of the overhang. Its trunk had grown wide enough that the cave entrance wasn’t visible at all from the base of the rock pile. He crouched facing the opening and hesitated for only a moment before crawling through.
Ethan climbed the pile to join him. “You sure that’s safe? Some of these rocks look like they’ve fallen recently.”
“It’s here.” Jack sounded like he didn’t believe it himself.
“What?”
“This.” He crawled out wearing an enormous grin, holding what appeared to be a standard power cell. It was grimy and discolored but otherwise matched the one from the truck, right down to the red lightning bolt.
And its connection light was blinking.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Press conferences can be productive, tedious, confrontational, or anything in between. The one Pieter had just suffered through was a mixed bag. James went on at length, reassuring the crowd with his too-white teeth and nonchalant smile. Pieter tried to keep it brief, dismissing Newton’s Prophecy as fearmongering.
Unfortunately, there had been a major traffic accident on the highway involving a grain carrier. The cause was still under investigation but the timing could not have been worse. Pieter was hardly surprised when a reporter told him the transporter was one of Armenau’s vehicles—it was turning into that kind of day.
He’d arrived on Cirrus that morning, hoping to be free by noon to oversee the final test. That didn’t happen. Instead, James had arranged meetings with high-value investors and politicians—meetings Pieter had to attend in case he needed their support in coming days. As a result, he was out of the loop on the most recent developments.
At three o’clock, he instructed his driver to take him to the city’s reservoir. Danny was already waiting there in an underground chamber.
Pieter surveyed the converted water tank as he entered. On one side, racks of portal testers and supercomputers matched those in Doctor Marke’s Archive. Next to them was the resonator—the original. He was pleased to see that the second device was already disassembled and ready for transport to Earth.
Danny didn’t wait for Pieter to ask the obvious question. “We haven’t caught them yet. But we know where they went.”
Pieter already knew some of the details. The boys had left town the night before, having hitched a ride on a self-guided vehicle. The plan to catch them this morning had failed miserably. “What went wrong?”
Danny sent a video to Pieter’s phone. “The intercept team was waiting at the crossroad. They saw the front wheels of a transport turn and lock. It slid across the highway and rolled over.”
“An autonomous unit? Turned on its own in the middle of the road?”
Danny started the video, recorded by one of his contractors. A harvester passed by the parked CorpSec vehicle just as Jack’s truck pulled up to the intersection. Seconds later, an oncoming grain carrier swerved into its lane and flipped over. A gritty yellow wave flowed along the road and covered the van in several inches of grain.
“It completely blocked both lanes, forcing us to detour to a single-lane road. That’s when the TCA got spooked and my crew was caught in the middle of a convoy.”
Pieter scanned the news on his phone. The Traffic Control Authority—fearing a terrorist act on the eve of Newton’s Prophecy—had cut the maximum speed of all self-driving transporters in the sector.
Danny continued. “It took two hours to get back to the main road. They’d already got into the forest, where they swapped the vehicle’s transponder and sent a drone to Fairview in their place.” He brought up a map on a nearby workstation.
Pieter examined the grouping of irregular shapes on the screen. “What are these zones?”
“The outer loop shows how far they could have gone before we cut the power. The smaller ones are where we’re concentrating our search.”
Pieter silently conceded that the boys’ plan had been clever. However, they couldn’t possibly have engineered the crash, and it had been much too effective to be coincidental. That the carrier was one of his own fleet seemed like a deliberate taunt. Someone else was responsible—another Traveller. How much do they know?
He had an additional concern—one he couldn’t even begin to address. The afternoon’s resonance test had had an unexpected outcome, far beyond a simple power surge. He had felt it. And if he sensed it, then other Travellers did too.
There were also rumors of animals acting strangely all over Cirrus. Some were comparing this to stories of dogs barking before an earthquake and linked the event with the prophecy. Fortunately, he could ignore that and let others discredit those reports as fear-mongering. In truth, he had little choice in the matter; the test had been a success as far as the equipment was concerned. Not only was there no turning back, his plans had reached the stage where timing was critical.
Danny gestured at the lines drawn on the western side of the forest. “We’re think they’re headed for Port Isaac, but avoiding the main roads. We’d cover a lot more ground if you’d dispatch Enforcers.”
Pieter turned away from the monitor as new data appeared on the map. He tapped an icon on his phone. A much simpler diagram showed the positions of the anti-personnel drones that patrolled his estate or shadowed him on Cirrus. At that moment, an Enforcer hovered high above the reservoir.
He’d refused Danny’s earlier request, though he understand his head of security needed freedom to work effectively. Now, his intuition told him Jack would play a crucial role in the plan’s success. Danny had become too aggressive recently, but the high-speed drones might swing the balance in his favor. “Two,” he finally decided. “No munitions.”
Danny tapped an instruction into his phone. “If they’re on foot, we’ll have them by morning.”
Pieter reconsidered the map, which showed a range of variables, including the possibility they’d been picked up in another vehicle. “And if they’re not?” However, even as he asked, he knew the boys were on their own. Someone had blocked traffic to give them time to escape; whoever was helping them was working remotely.
Danny answered the question anyway. “We’re checking all transporters in the area and stopping all other traffic.”
This act was highly illegal. Luckily, the TCA’s own actions and worries over terrorism meant Pieter could avoid complications for a while. And he only needed one more day.
“The closest settlement is Granton.” Danny tapped the town’s marker. “Their CorpSec is part of the Ballard co-op—we don’t have anyone on the inside. If that’s where they’re headed, they’ll still be hours away on foot. They might connect with Ballard and ask them to call the police.”
“No. Corporate politics isn’t something people their age are interested in. Every town would be the same to them. They had an opportunity to contact local security last night. They didn’t. That can only mean someone told them where to go.” And having said it, Pieter knew it was true. “They were told to go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Let’s find out.”
The circular chamber they stood in had no interior walls. A steel ladder, in the exact center of the room, led to a hatch in the domed ceiling, thirty feet above. The ladder continued through an opening in the floor. An open-cage style elevator ran next to it. Danny opened the door for Pieter and followed him into the cage.
The lower level was completely different. Ten rooms ringed the chamber, creating a smaller, circular space centered on the ladder. They’d been printed using the weather-resistant concrete blend normally used for exterior walls, and had the appearance of being constructed hastily, choosing function over form.
Metal doors, each with an access panel beside it, secured each room. Danny waved his card over a sensor to unlock a door, then slid it open for Pieter.
