By Ste Whitehouse
‘The Pipe-world, Ah’kis, is five thousand miles long and just over ten miles in diameter. It was one of a dozen Arks sent out from Earth to populate distant planets; each meant to journey a mere 200 years at one third light speed. But some accident knocked Ark Six from its course and now 10000 years have passed. Kassi seeks her brother who has been kidnapped by ‘demons’ and now travels north to the end of the world. She is accompanied by Sebastian a sentient bot of dubious origins with whom she can communicate telepathically. That ability seems to set her apart from the rest of the world’s population.’
KASSI BANKED TO the left, feeling the swirling updraft of heated air that swirled about this close to the sunline. Far below her were the tops of clouds that twisted up and around. Four and a half miles below her was the world she inhabited. Ah’kis. Ark Six. The pipeworld, even now hurtling through space at a third the speed of light. All of this was immaterial to Kassi. Just numbers and words spoken by Sebastian. What was visceral was the feeling of freedom that flight brought. The way everything fell away in that one moment when you stepped off and did not fall.
Kassi set the wings as she had been shown and the suit turned gently. An amalgam of pulleys, gears and wings that had been almost built around her like armour. The suit expanded her reach out yards each way with complicated fins and other foils that enabled the warrior to bank and turn much like the birds. The sunline swept above and then below her as she rolled and cut through the air.
This close to the sunline the air was thinner. Not drastically so, but enough to cool the radiated heat a little. Zen, one of the senior elves, had shown her what to do during her training over the past two weeks, and now here she was. Flying alone in the sky, Zen’s words echoing in her ears. The thing is. This far up you would have to be practically an idiot to even fall. We weigh almost nothing. So flying is more like swimming. And so she swam. High above the clouds. Circling the sunline that roasted the air only eight hundred yards away.
Swam and thought. They had spent two months atop The Spike. Two long months reuniting and remembering. For some it was easier. Sin had grown in the months they had been apart and somehow it seemed to Kassi he was becoming a different person. One more grown up than ever, but still the bubbling lad in awe with her. Fion had also been easy. An old lover was someone you would always be comfortable with. The same with Johan.
The problem Kassi had was with Kaze. Her brother. Her once older and now younger brother, due to him spending time in the aliens’ suspended animation tech/magic. Kaze, who had spent years locked away in a form of sleep while she and Sebastian had wandered the pipeworld free. Why had she not rushed here immediately? Why had she lingered? Eight weeks and Kassi still could not fully open up to Kaze. Fearful that he would hate her because of what she did not do.
Sebastian kept telling her she’d had no choice. That the young girl from ten years ago would have been killed long before she would have reached this place. Would this younger Kassi have found the strength of will to defeat the Siren[1]? Or the Gorgon[2]? Sebastian had asked, and Kassi could not answer. But was that enough? Was she really building experience all that time on The Shadow Queen as captain to a bunch of weird non-pirates? Traipsing through the red desert fighting solid holograms and various raiders?
It certainly helped to think so, but then she would need to think that wouldn’t she? Need to assuage her fears. For a woman who liked solving problems by hitting them repeatedly with a large sword, thinking through an issue gave her a headache. Which was why, when Zen had offered to teach her to use the ‘Air-Wings’ Kassi had jumped at the chance. Literally.
The cool air washed across her face as Kassi tilted the wings and began her circumnavigation. Circling the sunline was a rite of passage. Not so close that the plasma in the thin tube reacted with the few electronics on board, but not so far away as to stretch out the time. And to do it counter-clockwise. A subliminal sense of pushing against something added to the feeling of achievement. Kassi felt the wings respond to the slight movements of her hands and feet, making the entire process feel almost natural. She barely had to move her arms.
The heat of the sunline was continually on her back as she pushed forward. Hot enough to be uncomfortable. Behind her, below her, the world shifted, and the Spike moved behind the sunline, obscured by its intense light. It was then that she saw six other air-wings lazily circling. Waiting. Zen had not mentioned there were other ‘Wings’ out today, although with thousands of miles of sky to play with, it would not be surprising. Only? Only the six ‘Wings’ looked suspiciously like they were waiting.
As she rounded the glare of the sunline the six slowly came to life. Gracefully swooping through the air towards her. That was certainly not good. No one had ever been thrilled by a crowd waiting just for them, hidden away in the shadows; or in this instance the sunline. But what could they actually do? She cursed that thought as, almost as if reading her mind. Two of the flyers brought out those long wands that Sebastian called rifles.
THAT is what they can do. Kassi thought angrily.
The Circle, or that part of the Circle of Scientists that had worked with the alien !Chann and wished Kassi dead, had allegedly been neutered. Of course, now it appeared that some of them had not received their letters in the post. Six of them, to be specific.
A bullet whizzed past her, followed by the sound of a wand. Kassi sighed inwardly. Two months. She’d had two whole months of peace. Now today this happens. Of course, she noted reluctantly, this was the perfect ambush. One shot and her body could stay up here forever and never be found. Just one more statistic. Added to that was the fact that all her skill with a blade was effectively useless up here. Plus, she never carried a wand/pistol. A great ambush. If she hadn’t been the target, the tactic would have impressed her.
Of course, she was Kassi Seishin. Not some hopeless elf who just flew for fun. Over the past two weeks, she had learnt all there was to know about how to use the wings to ‘swim’ through the air. She had also been testing the possibilities that a wing had for warfare. To be honest, the answer was pretty much a fat zero. You could carry weapons and large bombs but to be really effective a ‘wing’ needed to stay high up here close to the sunline and not head downwards where centrifugal force could eventually increase your weight just by the increased pressure that forced the air itself ‘downwards’. Flying a flimsy, almost paper-thin aircraft would then be difficult.
Of course, Kassi thought, heading down would put all of us at a disadvantage. She smiled as the second rifle-elf fired and sent himself spinning like a top. Action and reaction, as Sebastian would say. In an almost weightless environment. She tried to contact her friend, but this close to the sunline even their shared telepathy was affected. Before the other four could either bring out a weapon or use some sort of taser, Kassi made her decision.
But first she needed to thin the herd.
Instead of fleeing in panic as the other flyers had expected, because they always underestimated the warrior, she flew directly at them. She corkscrewed to make a less appealing target, but headed directly into their midst. As she expected, they scattered before she had even reached them. One of the rifle-elves diving right below her. She stretched her left arm, twisted her right, causing the wings to slow her down and turn her at almost right angles.
She flapped the wings hard pushing both her and the device downwards quickly. Keeping the wings at her side to allow less resistance, Kassi was propelled through the air like a very slow, very ornate bullet. A bullet that none-the-less found its target. For safety reasons, all flyers wore hard helmets, because, to enhance the experience, the flyer’s head was left unimpeded. It allowed the flyer to see the world in all its incredible detail. It also allowed Kassi to crash through the elf’s right wing head first and not sustain any damage.
To Kassi, that is. The other flyer just began to spin as one of its wings slowly spread out across the sky in pieces. His rifle also floated away as the elf struggled to correct his spin. Kassi wished she could return and collect it, but the other five were gathering their wits and circling back. Instead, she continued downwards, flapping her wings to pick up speed as she ‘fell’ ever closer to the inner ground of Ah’kis.
A couple of bullets scorched past her, so she had to adjust her flight path a little. Weaving through the air. Feeling it thicken almost imperceptibly and cool as they moved away from the sunline. Two were much better flyers than the others, and they inched forward on the long journey groundward.
Kassi edged forward for a bit and then slowed, allowing the two other flyers to close the distance. She slipped a little to her left, drawing one of them to close the distance between him and his partner. Judging the time and distance Kassi suddenly flicked open her wings, turning them into the rush of air for a brief second or two before turning them edge-on with the oncoming flyers.
As she thought, the sudden manoeuvre which slowed her almost to a halt caught the two Sighs by surprise. Wings beating furiously, they both rushed past her, their own wings wide and open against the thin edge of her own. Her wings sustained some damage, but nothing like the destruction of the two others. One, his wing completely obliterated, spun. Picking up speed as he fell towards the curved ground far below.
It would not make a pretty landing, Kassi thought ruefully.
The other flyer struggled to regain control, but he was now positioned below her and as he slowed she dropped, landing on his back.
‘Hi,’ she said above the scream of the wind at three miles up. ‘Sorry to drop in like this.’ Sebastian would be proud. She slipped her hands into the delicate mechanisms, built for lightness, not protection, and ripped them out. He tried to turn around and shoot her but only managed to wave his wand/pistol vaguely in Kassi’s direction. It was for his own good, she decided, that she relieved him of such a nasty and dangerous thing.
She pushed off from him, wand in hand. The Sigh looked at her, his eyes wide with fear.
‘Down or this?’ she offered.
Realising his choices, the elf slumped forward and cried. Well, thought Kassi, Perhaps someone will come and rescue him. She had no stomach for shooting a crying man. Especially one crying out for his mum.
She pushed downwards. The remaining three flyers close on her heels. Which was odd, Kassi thought, because technically, while flying, they were really close on her toes. A thing she’d need to speak with Sebastian about. If she survived.
A bullet clipped a wing. Her pristine mechanism was scuffed and shuddered with a decidedly heart wrenching pause along its right side. Zen would be pissed. Admittedly, she would not be happy either if she failed to return. She tried contacting Sebastian again via the telepathic link they shared, but the ‘fuzz’ emanating from the sunline made such contact uncertain. He had explained it as a wide band of electro-magnetic radiation that made all radio communications difficult. Hence the ancients’ dependence on telepathy. The only issue was being this close to the sunline made even that form of communication difficult.
With a sigh, Kassi sped groundward. Not exactly falling. Not in the sense of gravity pulling her and the others down, because on Pipeworld there was no gravity. Just centrifugal force. Each beat of her wings increased the speed at which she travelled while ‘below’ her, Ah’kis slowly but noticeably rotated. Kassi had been around a Surface Engineer Bot for a long time and certain bits of information had seeped into her. At least she hoped so.
As far as she was aware, when she stood on the surface anywhere in Ah’kis, centrifugal force ‘pushed’ her down towards the ground. If she jumped up, she was still ‘rotating’ as fast as the ground. Only here she was in the sky. Not tethered to the ground at all. Was she free from that force? She hoped so. That meant that she could manoeuvre close to the ground with no extra ‘weight’, just the imperceptible push of air as it too circulated around and around. Kassi bargained on that process being slow. At least slow enough to implement what she wanted. Which was speed. So again and again she pushed her flyer forward. Speeding up little by little as they all approached the looming ground ahead.
Now the experience of her enemies showed. Gradually, they closed the distance. Another few shots came perilously close. One even went through her right wing, fortunately missing all the essential wires and gears that enabled her to fly. But she would not always be so lucky. Moving erratically would throw off their aim, but also slow her down. Enabling the three other flyers to catch her up well before the ground became her choice of battlefield.
She pushed her suit to its limit. Her arms were tired from flapping so much. Kassi now had a newfound respect for birds. Which did her no good at all. Another shot clipped a wing, chipping the thin material. She might not make it. The thought bubbled in her mind, but Kassi focused instead on what she could do. Which was fly faster. Her arms could rest later. Either way, she decided gloomily. Dead or alive.
Just then, behind her, there was a commotion. She flipped around on her back better to see what was going on and saw the three other flyers closer than she wished. Then she ‘heard’ a yahoo, and another wing appeared from out of the glare of the sunline smashing through the middle flyer with the rifle and shattering both flyers into thousands of shards that hung listlessly in the air like debris scattered across a vast invisible edifice.
Sebastian ‘sent’ her a message. {You’re all clear, kid. Now let’s go blow this thing and go home.}
{You do know that these pop culture references are lost on me?} She retorted.
{I know, luv, but if you’re trying the Median Trench run, it’s the least I could say.}
{Again. Pop. Culture. References.}
The other two flyers had turned away, slowing them down and giving her a chance to reach the ground fast approaching. Then Kassi noticed Sebastian’s flyer. Or what was left of it. {Seb? We’re still pretty high up. And you’re moving very quickly groundward?
{When I managed to decipher your ‘call’ I came as soon as I could, but do you think I would get into one of these damn things without a parachute?}
{As I haven’t a clue what one of those is, I can’t really say.}
Suddenly a large white sheet mushroomed out from Sebastian’s dwindling figure.
{See you below} he said in response.
Fading into the background of shadows and desert rushing faster and faster towards Kassi. She turned her focus to the world filling her vision. The Spike could be seen at the centre of a series of cliffs and walls a hundred feet or more in height. Kassi had noted during her stay atop the Spike that the ravines and pathways formed a twisted pattern much like an ancient form of carving from Earth called Celtic. Interwoven threads that wound around a central image or space, in this case the spike itself. Symmetrical.
Kassi could see the broad avenues the traders used, though she recalled they were not that wide, but she was aiming for the less popular routes. The winding, narrow passageways carved more for display than use. As her flyer came to around fifty feet from the surface, Kassi pulled up as hard as she could to skim along the ground about fifteen feet up. The entrance came at her at what seemed lightning speed and she only just turned on her side, allowing the flyer through the narrow gorge.
Her two assailants followed. The first flipping easily on his side. His companion almost made it but the tip of his left wing scraped across the canyon wall and suddenly he was rolling and pitching along a vertical slab of granite and sandstone. His flimsy craft now a string of debris following in his wake; alongside strips of flesh and bone. Kassi never heard his scream, as she was already turning into another gorge.
She twisted and turned, following the narrow canyons towards the centre. Always in pursuit, the last remaining flyer followed hard on her heels. The only good thing was that they both needed to focus fully on flying so he could not get a shot off, but then neither could Kassi. It was a race. One where tall walls of regolith wound an intricate path that needed to be followed precisely or else both would end up smeared across the walls of the corridors. Red walls flew past her vison. A flash of rippling stone either side of her. Narrowing her view. Forcing her to focus ahead only.
Below them, people looked up and screamed or dropped to the ground. Only the soft sound of wind rushing across canvas even alerted people to their passing overhead. Finally, they came to one long stretch. Kassi imagined where they were in her mind and smiled with satisfaction. The corridor was fairly wide and so she levelled out. A towering wall of red granite raced towards them. At the last moment, Kassi turned, her flyer almost tearing itself apart as she urged it around a tight corner.
It was almost a ninety-degree angle and her flyer had slowed so much that a child could have followed her at a run. Kassi was not too worried, though. As she had expected, her fellow flyer had been so close to her she must have filled most of his vision. Whereas she had nothing occluding her sight, he’d had her. So when she turned just before the vast sheet of rough granite, he had not, could not. Because he’d not been aware of how close they both were.
As Kassi struggled with her machine, the last remaining flyer ran into the rock-face behind her. Blood and metal now a splat across the red rock. Kassi shouted to move people as her flyer lost height and dropped like a dead weight to the floor. Kassi felt the sudden jolt as her body was ‘caught’ by the sand and pulled into its endless rotation. For a second, she felt dizzy and sick, rolling at an odd angle as the spinning ground dragged her leftwards. Then a welcoming sense of weight returned. She felt normal again and not that literal lightness she had experienced these last few months.
The flyer lumbered to a halt, and she scrambled ungainly out. Noticing how everything felt so heavy suddenly. Her ribs hurt and she would have a lovely pair of black eyes for a few weeks, and her left leg had become twisted in the crash so that she had to limp. But anything you walked away from was good. Mentally, she called out for Sebastian, wondering if this ‘parachute thing’ had worked.
‘I’m here, luv.’
She felt his warm metal touch at her side and did not even look down, but instead just lovingly rubbed her right hand across his ‘head’ and the knot of wires and servos that comprised his ‘neck’. A purr of contentment arose from somewhere, which she ignored. Sometimes he could be a funny bastard.
Guards rushed towards the crashed flyer. Two of them actually stopped and saluted her. Kassi waved her hand vaguely around her head and tried to smile. If Sebastian had not been at her side, she most likely would have stumbled and fallen to the ground. He leant in supporting her.
An elf in full exoskeleton lumbered over with a series of squeals and hisses. He stood a good foot taller than the warrior but somehow exuded a sense of humbleness, as if he were looking up at a superior. Sebastian reckoned there were lessons in the Circle of Sighs just teaching them this passive-aggressive look.
‘The head of the board wishes you to know that there was an attempted coup this morning in the Circles HQ. Failed, of course.’ (There was the smugness.) ‘The Chair just wants you to know that these Sighs who attacked you were nothing to do with us at all.’ There was a slightly worried tone to his voice. After all, it was not for nothing that Kassi was known and feared across most of Ah’kis.
{I think the good Chair does not want another bloodied nose} Sebastian thought slyly.
Kassi smiled. ‘I’m glad the Chair thinks that.’ Adding. ‘What about the bloke who sits in it?’
The elf looked confused. Sebastian slapped a ‘palm’ against hers behind her back, unseen by the elf. Without waiting for an answer, Kassi and Sebastian walked over to the Spike.
‘You know,’ said Kassi. ‘It’s going to take hours to return to the top.’
She looked upwards. The very top of the Spike, almost five miles away, vanished in the glare of the sunline.
‘I have even worse news, luv.’
‘What can be worse than an hour in smelly lifts?’ she asked.
‘Technically, you never completed a full three sixty around the plasma sunline.’
‘Shiiiiiiit.’ Kassi breathed out. ‘I’m going to have to do this all over again tomorrow.’
Well, that was a tomorrow problem. Today all she had to worry about was elven B.O. and a weird nervousness in the other passengers when she and Sebastian entered the lift. Oh. And if she would have to pay for the flyer. Also possibly Sebastian’s? Oh, and the others which made... eight? For a nanosecond, Kassi considered running. Far and long. Then the lift doors opened and her second worse experience of the day began. Elven B.O. (Sigh)
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