Daughters of Forgotten Light Page 5

  “Put your clothes back on,” Lena said.

  “They’re downstairs.”

  “They made you walk up the stairs like this?” Lena didn’t wait for an answer and laughed harder than before. Then, wiping tears from her eyes, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Sarah didn’t look up and Lena had no reason to make their new ass feel worse than she already did.

  “Here.” Lena walked to her bed and tossed Sarah the single glasscloth sheet she always kept crumpled on top. “Don’t take their jokes personally. We don’t get that many opportunities to fuck with people, and we’re not here to punish you. You’ve already been sent to this damned place and that’s punishment enough. It’s just a little hazing.”

  Sarah covered herself with the sheet and wiped her eyes. “They asked me a lot of questions.”

  “We don’t get much news or mail out here either, if you hadn’t noticed. I’ve got my own questions, but I’ll get to them later.”

  “Like what I did to get sent here?”

  “I couldn’t care less about that. You’re here. Knowing the details isn’t going to change that. Hell, none of them down there know why I got shipped.”

  “Why did you?”

  Lena snorted. “Put your bet in with the rest of the sheilas downstairs. They drill you over the rules and the way things work here?”

  “A little,” Sarah said. “It’s still hard to get used to.”

  “It’s your first day. If you’re lucky there’ll be plenty more to come so you can learn everything. Just follow the ups.”

  Sarah’s wrinkled brow urged Lena to explain.

  “The ups. Shut up, listen up, hurry up. You do that, you’ll be all right.”

  Sarah tightened the sheet around her. Lena was staring, made more awkward because the newbie was naked and clueless. Turning back to her window, Lena focused on a cluster of dweller lights.

  Something still had to be done about the Amazons.

  “You know, Pao,” Lena said. “There’s a way you can repay me without degrading yourself.”

  Lena waited for her to speak, but Sarah only cleared her throat to let Lena know she still stood there listening. Good. She was following the first up.

  “Here’s another up for you. You’re going to back me up on everything. Any decision I make, whether you think it’s a good idea or not, whether anyone else disagrees, you’re going to side with me. That shouldn’t be too hard, huh?”

  “No,” Sarah said. “That sounds easy enough.”

  Lena held up her left fist, a sign of finality. “Don’t welsh on this deal.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Ma’am?

  Damn, did she look that old? Lena laughed again. It felt good to be genuinely amused, and not the psycho rage-cackling that riding a cyclone through the streets brought out of her. Pao would prove useful for entertainment at least. “Just call me Lena.”

  “Why did they kill them?” Sarah’s question pulled Lena from the window. “Why did that other gang… rang the shippees?”

  “The Amazons?” Lena sighed and gathered her answer. How to explain this to someone from outside their sandbox of terror? “It’s part of the truce. The shipper port never sends enough manna and if you think the population is a problem on Earth, it’s ten times worse here. The truce solves more than one problem at the same time. The cannibals get what they like to eat and the rest of us get enough manna to survive until the next shipment without having to fight over it.

  “Each gang and their dwellers divvy up responsibilities so we all have to rely on each other. Our gang handles the mechanical and technical shit. That’s why the Amazons don’t try to wipe us all out. Not that they could. And I wouldn’t feel too sore about those shippees you came here with. Some might argue they got the easy way out.”

  “Some of them were friends of mine.” Sarah covered her mouth for a moment, fighting something back, and then shook her head. “And that baby.”

  “Yeah, it sucks.” Pao had been in the same box with that pale girl and the baby. She had to know who’d smuggled her out here. “How’d that baby get in your shipment?”

  Sarah parted her lips. At first, nothing came out, but then she said, “I don’t know.” And it seemed to add questions to her own mind. “We were so scared and it happened so fast when our launch date came. Some of the shippees in our group ended up being moved to another part of the port, and we all swore they were being taken to be shot. Never saw them again. But that girl, the one who had the baby. When the guards lined us up and inspected what we were bringing with us, our one item, they marked down that she was bringing a doll and shoved her in the box.”

  “You saying the port guards couldn’t tell the difference between a doll and a baby?”

  “No. I’m saying she had a doll. Plastic skin, glass eyes. I know. I picked it up when she dropped it. But then, after the launch, she had that baby in her arms.”

  “Someone had already put the kid in the box.”

  “I guess. None of us said anything. We didn’t know what to think. And honestly, it calmed us down a little. We took turns squeezing juice out of the manna for the baby to drink.”

  Lena ran fingers through her hair at each side of her head. It helped her think. “First time I’ve ever heard of someone Earthside fucking with the shipment.”

  And it meant one of many things. Either someone had used the shipment as their personal garbage chute, or the good ole UC of NA had started sending anybody, no matter the age. If things had gotten that bad, who’s to say the government wouldn’t abolish Oubliette altogether – and not in the way she’d been hoping for the last ten years.

  “Is there always a shipment?” Sarah asked.

  “I worry about that every damn day. Now get downstairs and get your clothes back on. Sometime soon we’ll get you over to Grindy’s and get you armed and ready to ride.” Lena pointed at Sarah. “And I want my sheet back.”

  Sarah nodded and, most likely remembering the third up, hurried down the stairs. Lena turned back to the city hiding in the darkness outside the window. She looked toward the Amazons’ headquarters, somewhere far off and blocked from view by another building used by the dwellers. That beautiful baby girl waited there, surrounded by those monstrous, crab-infested thundertwats.

  What to do? Lena thought. What to do?

  Chapter 6

  “You that senator lady?” The engineer’s voice surprised Dolfuse over the whining and buzzing.

  “Linda Dolfuse.”

  “I’m Wickey.” The grease-faced woman stepped forward and offered her hand.

  Dolfuse regarded the hand as if it were a bomb set to explode as soon as she touched it. All that muck staining the palm. Still, diplomacy rode no high horse. She placed the tips of her fingers in Wickey’s grip, minding to keep her thumb tight so their hands wouldn’t officially link.

  Wearing navy blue coveralls, Wickey had tied her blonde hair into a ponytail under a cap she wore backwards. Oil covered it all. Goodness, it was all over her.

  Dolfuse afforded a smile. “Thanks for letting me come take a look.”

  “No problem. We’re all in service to the continent, yeah?”

  “Of course.”

  “Right this way.” Wickey turned back to the tall, clean doors she’d come from. They were frosted white where only shadows flitted by every so often, a fog of glass. When Wickey opened the doors, a whining buzz escaped from the workshop.

  Dolfuse plugged fingers in her ears.

  “Oh, I almost forgot.” Wickey closed the door and trudged over to a wall where an assortment of tools and knickknacks hung from hooks. She returned with a pair of headphones and a hardhat.

  “What about you?” Dolfuse asked.

  “Nah. I’m used to the sound.”

  Dolfuse secured her safety equipment and followed Wickey through the doors. Sparks flitted into the air at her left as an engineer welded on a large metal dome. The senator jumped and released a whimper.

  “It’
s all right,” Wickey shouted, smiling. “If we stay on the grating here, you shouldn’t get hurt.”

  Shouldn’t. An awful lot could be filled into “shouldn’t.”

  Dolfuse followed the metal grating to a rust-covered guard rail that circled the entire circumference of the silo. It was nearly a half mile to the other side with nothing but air and flying lifts between there and where she stood.

  She tried not to acknowledge the dark pit below, where firefly-sized red lights floated like scavenging sea creatures.

  Levels upon levels of work floors rose to the top, engineers bustling endlessly on every single one. The lifts hovering from floor to floor were automated drones, carrying different items in their clawed arms. Hot exhaust warbled the air around their thrusters.

  At ground level, Wickey and Dolfuse stood halfway between the silo’s top and bottom. Dolfuse clutched the railing as she looked over and braved vertigo to survey the deep lower levels reaching into the Earth’s recesses. She almost wished she’d brought a penny to see if it could be heard hitting the bottom. Ha! You couldn’t hear anything in this mechanical circus.

  “This way, senator,” Wickey shouted. She extended her hand toward a set of stairs several yards away. “It’s a few levels down.”

  “You all seem to keep busy,” Dolfuse shouted back as they walked on.

  “Yeah, the war sure helps with that. We’ve got recon drones aplenty. Amphibious drones, drones that can climb walls. Heck, I’ve even been working on a drone that can burrow underground.”

  “What about this one?”

  They’d come to a black monstrosity – a flying ship of some kind that could carry at least a dozen women. Huge guns were mounted at each corner, and the glass covering the cockpit was blacked out. Dolfuse worried what the wrong person at the trigger could do with such a thing.

  “Sweet Kiss,” Wickey said.

  “What?”

  Wickey laughed. “That’s what we call her. She’s a prototype, hasn’t seen much field action, but we show her off to the generals next month. Really versatile, since it can be manned like other fighter jets, but it can also be operated remotely, or set to blow away everything and everyone in the EA. This thing’s packing four plasma cannons, a cluster bomb launcher loaded in the belly, and, my personal touch, a phase scanner that locates and tracks any enemy, human or machine. It’s going to end the war.”

  Dolfuse believed it. A machine like that could swing the scales of the planet any way the operator saw fit. They moved on.

  “Yeah, I love it here.” Wickey stomped down the third set of steps they’d come to. “When I was sixteen my mom told me I either had to find a job or get ready for Oubliette. Well, I bet you can guess I got my ass in gear and started searching for reasonable employment.”

  Dolfuse remembered waking up in the middle of the night when she was a little girl, screaming in terror from dreaming she’d awoken in that terrible city in the sky. Her mother had always comforted her with a glass of water and a back rub. “I’d never do that to you,” she’d say.

  Wickey’s life story gave Dolfuse something to focus on besides the onslaught of cantankerous construction, and her own guilty criticism.

  “Hell, I figured I love working with my hands and tinkering and stuff, and I sure ain’t afraid to get dirty. About that time was when they were pushing for engineer recruits, and here I am.”

  “This drone I called you about,” Dolfuse said. “Is it small enough to get into places, avoid detection?”

  “Sure. It’s only about the size of a big pigeon. Noiseless, too. If your op needs to be covert, it’ll be just the thing. But here, see for yourself.”

  Wickey exited the steps, upping her pace, and Dolfuse struggled to keep up in her heels. The working noise lessened. No one was ratcheting bolts or burning cuts into metal here. All the drones on this floor were ready for sale and small enough to be displayed on a long table and under a square of glass.

  “It’s this one here I told you about.” Wickey extended a hand to the third one from the right.

  At Dolfuse’s approach, a light brightened from below the drone display. Wickey had described the particular drone’s size accurately. But its shape – it looked like a sperm, though Dolfuse fought hard to attach a less disturbing description to it. It really was just like one of Bobby’s white swimmers, except the tail stuck out straight and a large camera lens sat in the large, round “head”. The others on the display case were shaped like spheres or mechanical octopi.

  “How’s it controlled?”

  Wickey picked up a small, white stick from a nearby cart. “This.”

  “Even my hands are too big for that.”

  Wickey chuckled. “It’s not a remote controller, just a flash drive. You plug it into any computer. Software downloads immediately. The drone follows programmed variables: a certain area, large crowds, specific sounds, whatever.”

  Dolfuse looked at the other drones, the ones that looked less like sex cells. “What about those? Why is this one superior?”

  “The one I’m suggesting is more maneuverable, for starters. The others are designed for more specific tasks – underwater operations, rough terrain. Plus, the other ones are crones, comparatively.”

  “How far away can it be operated?”

  “Anywhere in the world. That Dropshot drone is the best.”

  Dolfuse stared at the sperm-shaped mechanism. Who cares what it looks like if it gets the job done, she thought. The space gate’s relay would prevent a delay in the video feed, and Martin would know someone who could program it.

  “You have any other questions about the drone?” Wickey bent her head a little, concerned.

  “Yes,” Dolfuse said, straightening her posture. “Does it come in black?”

  Chapter 7

  Sarah kept hearing the Daughters use terms like week, day, and quarter, but could never figure out how they told time here. It seemed just like one horrible, long night. No sun. No clocks or watches. Sleep would call to her every so often and she’d answer its summons after asking permission from Ava. Even then, she lost count of how many times she fell asleep. It still felt like the same day when she’d wake up.

  When she got hungry, she would pinch off a moist bit of the manna she’d been rationed. Just like it had in the shipment box, the manna tasted like stale air, smelled like paint, and would release fluid as she chewed, keeping her hydrated, she assumed, and giving her the suitable amount of nutrients she needed to survive another span between sleeps.

  Then one… day, she guessed, after coming down from the room they’d given her, Hurley Girly told her it had been about a week and a half since she’d stepped out of the shipment box.

  “We’re going to take you to Grindy. Get you supplied.”

  Oh, yeah. The rang gun and the cyclone. She’d almost forgotten. Her days had been spent moving boxes from one corner to the other or wiping down the shower room, futile exercises the Daughters had made her perform because they didn’t know what else to do with her. At least, that’s what she thought. It wasn’t like there was much to clean. And even if there was, what did it really matter?

  Lena came down from the black stairs. “I want to show her the Core, too.”

  “Damn,” Dipity said. “Already?”

  “Might be her only chance to see it,” Hurley Girly said to Sarah with a wink. “Seeing how high the death rate is.”

  “Mortality rate,” Ava corrected.

  Hurley Girly rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  Sarah was just happy to go outside the building for once. Even though everyone kept mentioning how the streets were death for sure despite the truce, she’d risk it for a little taste of the night.

  “Dipity, you let Pao ride with you,” Lena said.

  Dipity nodded, although she huffed an annoyed sigh, while Hurley Girly crossed her arms and frowned. Sarah hurried over to Dipity’s cyclone and waited for the big woman to walk over and start the motorcycle.

  “Just don’t g
rope on me or anything.” Dipity swung one of her thick legs over the seat and grabbed the handlebars.

  It took barely a flick of the wrists to turn on the cyclone. The dazzling blue light that lived within the machine sprang forth, creating electric wheels that lifted Dipity up and filled the room with that low hum Sarah heard in her sleep, the noise she hadn’t forgotten from that first night out of the shipment box. Thank God it was that she recalled and not the screams of her fellow shippees at the end.

  “You coming?” Dipity asked.

  Sarah nodded, keeping her eyes on the buzzing light. “I still haven’t gotten used to all this.”

  “Shit,” Dipity said. “Neither have I. And I’ve been here a lot longer than you.”

  Sarah climbed on behind Dipity, grabbing the back of her jacket. She didn’t want to wrap her hands around Dipity’s waist. Hurley Girly opened the front doors, and just like that they were zipping after Lena and the others, out on the streets in a blink. God. No machine on Earth moved like the cyclones did.

  The group made two lefts and rounded a curve that rose over a cluster of short buildings. The architecture here was some strange mix of roller coaster engineering and her brother’s old Hot Wheels set. Sarah hoped there wouldn’t be a loop-the-loop. Hurley Girly joined the procession after a moment and then the gang flew even faster.

  Way better than a roller coaster, Sarah thought.

  She kept expecting to see another gang through an alley or on the road ahead; maybe those mohawked women from the week before. The Daughters must have had some well-known path of travel that wouldn’t have them cross paths with the other gangs, or they must have known when they’d have reign of the streets for themselves. Of course, it could have all been coincidence. The gang, Sarah’s gang, didn’t seem the type to avoid trouble. They were hungry for a good fight.

  Dipity rode so fast most of the city whipped by in a blur, but from what Sarah did see several buildings stood crumbling if not completely demolished. A cluster of dwellers sat on a darkened stoop and cheered when the Daughters flew by. The street’s glow painted their faces an eerie aquatic green. Hurley Girly had told Sarah that sometimes a building would “die” and quit working – no power, and sludge instead of water would seep from the showers. The dwellers living there would just move on and crowd another building. It was the Daughters’ job to make sure the dwellers didn’t kill each other in the process.