Eugene Lambert - Into the No-Zone

One good thing – at least Colm and I seem forgotten now.

I’m not complaining. See, I’m all healed, tooth regrown, strapping gone and ribs good again. And no wind means no windjammer flying, so I get to see more of Sky. She’s sitting cross-legged on the end of my bunk right now, her back to me, honing the long-bladed hunting knife I gave her. The steady rasp-rasp of steel on stone drags a yawn out of me.

I breathe in and fill my nose with the sweet smell of the gun oil she uses. It makes a very welcome change from the usual stink of damp and sweaty bodies.

‘How sharp d’you need it?’ I say, stretching.

‘Sharp,’ Sky says. ‘Needs a fine edge to cut through bone.’

By rights she shouldn’t be in here. Deeps rules – one lot of sleeping tents for male fighters, another for women. No pairing-up allowed. War comes first, something like that. But rules and regulations slide off Sky like rain runs off a fourhorn’s greasy back. She comes and goes as she pleases. I’m glad. Whenever she limps in here my heart starts thumping. Can’t help it.

So far today we haven’t argued. Not much anyway.

Sky inspects her blade, spits on the whetstone and goes again.

I go back to watching her vid. That’s against regs too, shot by her co-pilot Kallio’s helmet-cam on the last relief mission they flew to the Blight before our jammers were grounded. Jagged rocks flash close past the canopy. The early dawnshine picks out streaks of orange and yellow in cliffs that were grey a minute ago, green leaves clinging to stubby, wind-thrashed trees.

‘Do you have to fly so bogging low?’ I say, flinching.

Sky doesn’t look up. ‘The lower we scrape the ridges, the less likely we are to be picked up on the run-in.’

‘That’s crazy low though,’ I say, wincing as I spot some grazing fourhorns looking down at her windjammer as it whines past. They look about as horrified as I do. And Sky’s fast, but she’s only pureblood fast. One mistake, she’s chewing on rock. She banks round an outcrop, chucking the jammer about like it’s a toy. I’m pretty sure the right wing tip clips some branches.

She glances across at the camera – at Kallio – and grins. Which stings, seeing as I mainly get scowls.

Ahead, jinking about as it tracks the lower slopes of the ridge, I see the lead windjammer with their mission commander, Ekway, inside it. The dawnshine catches it as it banks left and tucks even closer to the rocks. I glimpse the Gemini symbol painted on the hull and under the stub-wings – a massive black handprint with the little finger painted blood-red. Twist-black-four we call it. I hold my left hand up and look at the stump where my little finger was, before the Answerman took it for his collection of grisly trophies, the price for his answers. It’s healed clean – course it has – I’m nublood. Yet even now it shocks me, like it’s a stranger’s hand I’m looking at. Weird too how it still itches sometimes on damp mornings, as if thinking about growing back.

In my earbuds I hear Ekway’s voice on Sky’s tac-comm.

‘Blight in five. Get ready for the drop.’

That drags my eyes back to the cleverbox screen, and a good view of Sky. Her hair, hacked off by Fliss when we were on the run together, is back to bleached-white dreads and nearly shoulder length now. Her cheekbones are daubed with the black paint jammer pilots wear; her jawbone works as she chews something. Her eyes, the dark green of deep water, flick about restlessly, checking instruments. I make out the teardrop inked under her left, in memory of Tarn. One twitch, they both die, yet she’s obviously loving every second. I never get to see her like this on the ground, so alive. I reckon she just doesn’t know what fear is.

I must mutter something because real Sky takes a break from her whetstone and glances back at me. ‘Where are you at?’

‘You’re about to hit the Blight.’

A massive bang makes me jump and curse.

On-screen Sky swears too, and I see a sticky smear of blood and guts and yellow-gold feathers sliding up the canopy.

‘Was that the bird?’ she asks.

I nod. ‘Scared the crap out of me.’

The view changes as Kallio unstraps and clambers back into the cargo hold to cut the crates loose on Sky’s signal. His hand mashes a red button on the hull. The ramp drops down, opening up the back of the windjammer, and I can almost feel the wind slap and tug at him. A steep, rock-strewn slope blurs past, so close it seems he could reach out and burn his fingers on it. He looks down. Way below is the valley bottom, green and yellow fields streaming backwards. Labourers straighten and look up, gobs open, as they soar over. I hear a buzzing. A light by the open hatch starts flashing, red and urgent, counting down the thirty seconds to the drop.

Sky dives them down now until they’re among the weeds, so low the downwash from their lifters kicks up a giant rooster tail of dust and earth behind the windjammer. Above the shriek of the wind I hear a crackling, tearing sound, and some bangs. Kallio’s view jerks forward to the flight deck. The sky ahead is a wall of snapping flame and writhing smoke. Lethal blobs of green seem to drift lazily upwards to flash past, barely missing.

‘They’re shooting at you!’ I exclaim, flinching just watching it.

Sky grunts. ‘Yeah, Slayers have a bad habit of doing that. They’ve stuck guns all around the Blight. We took loads of ground fire.’

Something clatters the hull, knocking the windjammer’s left wing down until Sky catches it and levels them. Kallio’s view shifts to the open back again. And now they’re hurtling low across the jumbled sprawl of shanty-town roofs that is the Blight. Or was – this isn’t the same place I stumbled through on my way to see the Answerman. This filthy maze of shacks, plywood, corrugated iron and sun-bleached plastic looks like some giant, fire-breathing monster has stomped all over it. Everywhere fires blaze unchecked. Columns of ugly black smoke billow into the air. In some open places I glimpse corpses left lying where they fell.

Seconds later I spot the first barricades. Piles of rubbish and rubble, burnt-out wrecks of Slayer landcrawlers, anything the desperate Blight defenders can lay their hands on.

Poor Blight. So close to Prime, it’s taken the biggest beating. We destroyed their precious Facility, so now the Slayers are taking their revenge by levelling the Blight and going after our rebel base underneath it, Bastion. Our besieged forces there are helping the Blighties fight, but are barely clinging on. Sky reckons three-quarters of the Blight is overrun or abandoned.

The drop light flicks from red to green. Kallio lets the crates go. One by one they rumble backwards to the open ramp and tumble out. Their drogue chutes snap and fill.

The view swings right.

I twitch big time as I see Prime itself, crouching there high on the hill above the Blight, like a gigantic, stone-walled toad. Within those walls, metal towers gleam like mercury, flinging the dawnshine back at Kallio’s helmet-cam. It’s his stronghold.

The Saviour. Warlord. Lawmaker. Despot. Ruler of Wrath.

Our enemy. And . . . my father.

So hard to believe, even now. So wrong. So unfair.

His fortress too – that was where they once dragged me and sucked my nublood out to pump into him, to heal his crippled, failing body. The memories reach inside me through my eyes, grasp my guts with ice-cold fingers and start to squeeze.

I’ve seen enough. I hit stop, yank the buds from my ears.

‘Wow,’ I say, fighting to keep my voice level. ‘Blight’s a mess.’

‘Did tell you,’ Sky says, without looking up.

With the sun on the canvas all day, it’s still warm in the tent. She’s peeled her jumpsuit top off and knotted it round her waist. I put the screen down and watch her sadly, the way her shoulder bones slide under her T-shirt with each stroke of the stone in her hand. Muscles stand out like cables in her skinny arms. A crescent of pale skin uncovers at the small of her back as she leans forward. Tempting. I could reach her with my toes and give her a tickle. Would do a while back, without thinking. Not now.