D. MacHale - Raven Rise

Good for the skimmer. Bad for me. I was stranded underwater. I looked up to see the blurry images of the flickering yellow quig lights hovering above me. I couldn’t surface. They’d be on me. I chose a direction and started to swim. Desperately. I didn’t know why or where I was going, but I didn’t want to be where I was. I half expected to hit the same wall the skimmer had, but I saw what looked like a long beam in front of me that was just below the water. I swam under it. Now I had to get air. I pulled for the surface and hit my hands on something. I was below a dock. If I hadn’t been in a panic before, I sure was then, because I was trapped. If the water level went all the way up to this hard surface, I’d drown. I didn’t have the energy to swim back out. Not that I even knew which way was out. With my hand touching the hard ceiling, I cautiously surfaced and hit the top of my head. No! There was no breathing room! I kept my wits though. I only needed a few inches of air. The distance from the top of my head to my mouth was what? Six inches? I didn’t need that much. I kicked my legs so I was floating on my back. I pushed my face up, lips first, and broke the surface. Yes! I think I gulped more water than air and had to gag and cough. I didn’t care. I had air. I pressed my lips against the rough surface to stay as far out of the water as possible. I’m guessing there was about a three-inch gap between the surface of the water and the underside of whatever was above me. It was enough. Once I calmed myself, I actually found it easier to breathe through my nose, because when I opened my mouth, water sloshed inside. It was a nightmare situation, but I was alive.

The surface was rough, like wood. Faint lines of light glowed between the planks. I positioned my eye below one seam to try to see what was above. When I focused, I immediately gasped and dropped below the surface, inhaling a bunch of water. I instantly pushed back up and coughed l it out. I had to keep my head together or I’d drown for sure. What I had seen was a bunch of quig-bees trying to push themselves through the cracks between the boards to get to me. They sounded angry, too. If they got through, they’d be on me. The quigs were no more than two inches from my eyes, desperately trying to get at me. All I could do was hope that the space between the boards was too narrow for them to squeeze through.

A few agonizing seconds later, none of them had made it. They were too big. I was safe. Uncomfortable as hell, but safe. The only way they would get me was if they waited me out. No way I’d let that happen. As torturous as it was, I was prepared to float like that for days to avoid those bees.

I’m glad to say it didn’t take days. I had been under there for a few minutes at best when the quig swarm suddenly took off. I could see the flashes of light through the thin cracks as they streaked through the darkness, headed someplace else. I waited. The buzzing sound was soon gone. I didn’t hear the whine of the skimmer engine either. The only sound was the sloshing of the water against the underside of the structure above my head. I waited a few more minutes, to make sure they were really gone, then made a move to get out. I took a deep breath and pushed underwater. Looking around, I saw that one direction looked brighter than the other. I swam that way. It only took a few strokes before the ceiling I was under, ended. I was back out in open water. Or at least I was back out to where the skimmer had abandoned me. I kicked and broke the surface to take the first comfortable breath of air I’d had since I entered the water.

A quick look around told me several things. Most important, the quig-bees were gone. Hopefully for good. Second, the skimmer was gone too. I guessed it had spun around and made its way back out to sea. I hoped the quigs were chasing it. The third thing I realized was that I was in a familiar place. I had maneuvered the skimmer beneath the tall pier where the thousands of skimmers from Cloral had been kept. This is where Siry and I stole the skimmer to escape from Rubic City. Most of the skimmers were gone. I saw a few vehicles bobbing against the docks, but that was it. It was like being inside a big, wet, empty airplane hangar.

I had been hiding beneath one of the narrow docks that ringed the place. I took a few strokes back to the dock and hoisted myself up on top. Man, it felt good to have something solid under my butt. It felt even better to breathe. I made two fists. My hands had been stung pretty bad and were swollen. I didn’t care. It was a small price to pay. I wished I could have sat around and enjoyed the simple pleasure of filling my lungs with something other than water, but I had business to do. My relief over having survived the quig attack didn’t last long. It was time to find the mine that the Flighters had been digging.

It was time to find Saint Dane.

My single goal was to figure out a way to destroy that mine and bury the flume forever. How? I had no idea. If I wanted to save Ibara and return to my life on the island, I would have to find a way. I hoped I wasn’t too late. Could the flume already have been found? How long had the Flighters been digging? How deep was the flume buried beneath the rubble of Rubic City? It seemed like an impossible task to unearth something so huge, without tools or digging equipment…other than the bleeding hands and tired backs of the poor Flighters. Logic told me that digging out the flume was impossible. Yet Loque said he had been inside the mine. They had made progress. Ihad to hope that the attack of the quig-bees didn’t mean that the flume was already open.

The one weapon I’d brought with me, the bow and arrows, was gone. I had it beneath the deck of the skimmer, which was now headed off to parts unknown. I needed something to protect myself, so I scanned around for a length of pipe or wood. I saw what I needed a few feet from where I came out of the water. It was a wooden rod with a hook on the end that was probably used to control the skimmers from the docks. I picked it up, felt that it was solid, and spun it once. Bad move. I was out of practice. My swollen sore hands didn’t help either. I lost control of the rod and beaned myself in the head. Dope. Not only did I nearly knock myself out, I proved to myself that I was rusty. I hadn’t fought in months, and it wasn’t as if I were an expert in fighting-like Loor-in the first place. I had to have faith that if I needed them, my skills would return. Was fighting like riding a bike? I was afraid I would have to find that out at some point. I hoped I wouldn’t knock myself out before then.

I climbed a metal ladder up and out of the pier and got my first close view of the decaying metropolis of Rubic City. Nothing had changed since I was last there. There were a few hundred yards of bare ground that were covered with mounds of debris-I was guessing this was at one time a park. Beyond that, the tall buildings began. The afternoon was so clear I could make out the giant outline of the Lifelight pyramid that was nestled deep within the canyons of skyscrapers. That was where I had to begin my search for the tunnel that would lead to the mine.

I didn’t want to run into any Flighters along the way. Or more quig-bees, for that matter. I figured the best thing I could do was keep moving, so I sprinted off the huge dock and headed for the city. Being in the open like that made me feel pretty vulnerable. There could have been eyes on me that were peering out from any number of the thousands of windows that overlooked the harbor area. I darted from mound to mound, trying to shield myself from curious eyes. It was probably a waste of energy.

I hit the first street and decided to hug the buildings. There was always the danger of a Flighter lying in wait and jumping out at me through a nearby window before I had time to react, but it was better than running down the street for all to see. The afternoon shadows were long. I felt fairly safe creeping through the darkened corners. I’d been through this city before, but it still gave me the creeps. The idea that a bustling, modern metropolis could crumble like this was pretty sobering. Nothing had been taken care of in more than three hundred years. I wondered if someday it would all be buried, waiting for archaeological expeditions of future generations to uncover the stores and streets of this dead civilization.