He taps through until the screen fills with black Old World symbols set against crisp white. The Federation emblem—the winged bird I’ve seen in the General’s library and on Amory’s clothes—covers most of the background as well, faint enough to not demand attention, but obvious if you’re looking at it. Like a stain.
“I don’t know what any of this means,” I say.
“Wait.” Reed presses the arrows again, and a strange symbol appears. It looks a bit like a face in profile, with a rainbow turned vertical beside it.
Text to audio enabled, a voice announces.
Reed taps again, and the disembodied voice continues to read what I presume are the words on the window.
Solar Cycles of CIX: Understanding the Star’s Activity and How It Affects Planet CIX-b
Compiled by Dr. Iris Rae Tollis, Federation Department of Energy
The voice reads on, and a lot of it is like babble in my ears, but the gist of it seems to be this: the sun above this wasteland has what the Federation calls an active period that strikes roughly every 116 years. Frequent flares erupt from the sun, causing geomagnetic storms of disastrous size, some lasting for days on end and occurring so frequently that they feel almost like one continuous storm. After about nine or ten moons of this, the sun will go quiet again, with the occasional dust storm or silent storm striking just a few times a year. And another 116 years later, the active period starts again.
Occasionally the solar cycle might be shorter or longer, perhaps by two or three years. There will be little warning if this happens, just an increase in flares and solar storms, kicking off the stretch of bad weather. The final warning sign will be an aurora that appears like a wide-stretching curtain, visible from the ground.
“I’m guessing that the storm Amory mentioned hit far more than two or three years early,” Reed says. “Otherwise those Federation people would never have brought weapons that could malfunction in the storms.”
“There must be another active period coming,” I say. “There’s been two silent storms just in the past two moons.”
He nods. “Meaning your plan will be the easiest to carry out soon. If Powder Town can build a fleet quickly, you’ll have a long stretch of silent storms to choose from when it comes to an attack on Bedrock.”
“It also means more chances for the General to realize that the weapons I trade him don’t work during the bad weather. If we can attack before the active period—maybe in the next storm or two, as the sun amps up—we might be able to pull it off. If we wait too long, we miss our chance.”
* * *
We load the wagon with all we can carry—one hundred and twenty mag-rifles, eighteen boxes stocked full of the bullet cases (each holding ten bullets), and two dozen plas bottles of water from the storeroom.
It takes all day to move the supplies onto the wind wagon. We cram what we can belowdecks, then stack the rest along the sideboards and near the stern. It weighs down the Gods Touched significantly. Between the load and the headwind, it’s going to take us a while to cross the barren stretch of desert, and by the time we’re ready to leave, the sun is setting.
“Should we wait until morning to shove off?” Asher asks.
“What’s the point?” I say. “We’ll take shifts—we know where we’re headed. Any extra time spent here just eats into our supplies.”
Harlie helps us get sailing and explains how we’ll travel in switchbacks on the way home, sailing west, then east, then west, then east, slowly cutting our way south against the headwind. When Asher, Reed, and I have a handle on the process, Harlie goes for a lie-down. She’s breathless and weak, meaning the silent storm is still raging.
By the third day, when Harlie’s feeling more like herself, I test a mag-rifle off the Gods Touched’s prow. It fires effortlessly, the blast echoing across the wastes. I smile to myself, giddiness coursing through me.
This is going to work.
We’re going to arm the General with weapons that will fail him at precisely the right time, and we’ll overrun him for good.
I just need the sun to cooperate, but if the report back at Eden taught me anything, it’s that suns are merely stars. Gods in their own right. They answer to no one but themselves.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
By the time I spot Harlie’s Hope through my binos it’s a hazy morning at dawn, and nearly half a moon has passed since we left Eden. We’re sunburned on the cheeks, wind-chapped from the headwind, and positively sick of smoked stallion. If I never have it again, it will be too soon.
Asher teases that I’ll be eating more tonight. And again tomorrow. We’ll be eating it until we reach Powder Town, but knowing we’re approaching Harlie’s Hope means the end is at least in sight.
I’m wiping dust from the front of my goggles when a strange shadow flits across the deck. I tilt my head up, search the sky, and spot it. A falcon. I race to the bow, bring my binos to my eyes. Sure enough, three dark figures on horseback are riding in from the south.
“Loyalists!” I call to the others.
The bird screeches above us, signaling to its team, as if our unnaturally tall mast couldn’t be spotted several clicks away.
“Call them off!” Asher shouts to Reed.
“I can’t! I have no way to signal them from here, and they’ll only shoot me the instant they realize I’ve defected.”
“Get one of the mag-rifles out,” I shout to Asher. “Two, actually. Harlie, you man the tiller. Reed? Stay low and see to the brakes. Asher and I will shoot as necessary.”
We should have had the weapons out all along, but I never expected to see anyone out this way. It’s a no man’s land, a dead end.
I don’t know how they found us. Maybe they’ve been searching for Reed ever since his communications with Bedrock went silent.
It doesn’t matter how it happened, just that it did.
They’ve found us, and there’s nowhere to hide.
Asher tosses me one of the rifles, and I catch it with two hands, then take aim. The Loyalists are still too far off. We’ll never hit them, not with the wind wagon bumping over every last rut.
The Loyalists’ falcon suddenly dives, plummeting for the rock outcropping that borders Harlie’s home. For a second I think maybe Asher has shot it down. Then I see the telltale sign of a dust storm—a yellow haze, thick and ugly and crackling with energy just beyond the rocks that border Harlie’s Hope. The outcropping is sheltering us from the worst of the wind and dust, but it will breach the obstacle soon.
“Will we make it?” I yell to Harlie.
“We’re about to find out.”
The Loyalists spot the storm too and kick their horses into a faster gallop. If they get to the shanties before us, we’ll rot.
“Tacking back to the west!” Harlie yells from the tiller. “Forget those guns, Delta. Help Reed at the brake. I’m angling us into the storm, and those winds should slow us plenty, but I don’t want to crash into the rocks.”
I glance up at the masts, praying that they somehow withstand the storm. If we’re close enough to the rocks, we might get lucky. We have to, because we can’t get the Old World tech to Powder Town without a working wind wagon.