Survival is only the beginning. Imogen Hart waits to be executed at the hands of the warrior nation Carran. Aboard the colonial spacecraft Conestoga, truth is running out of allies – or so it seems. As war looms both above and below, pockets of resistance both on Alamea and aboard Conestoga hold the rising threat at bay. Soon enough, everyone will have to make a choice: fight for truth, or face annihilation.
Who will stand and who will fall in the final battle for control?
Survival is only the beginning. Imogen Hart waits to be executed at the hands of the warrior nation Carran. Aboard the colonial spacecraft Conestoga, truth is running out of allies – or so it seems. As war looms both above and below, pockets of resistance both on Alamea and aboard Conestoga hold the rising threat at bay. Soon enough, everyone will have to make a choice: fight for truth, or face annihilation.
Who will stand and who will fall in the final battle for control?
Joshua tightens his sweaty grip on the duffle bag handles. His pulse beats a steady rhythm in his ears. He tries and fails to bring his breathing under control as the elevator emerges above ground, a stone’s throw away from the wavy white shape of the Trieste community center.
As soon as he steps out, he hears them. The Evers. His heart skips a few beats. The unmistakable chant grates his ears as he crosses the park, hoping he won’t be seen.
“EVER ON! EVER ON! EVER ON!”
Repulsive, but this gathering might be to his advantage. He needs to get home, as quick as possible, and he’s about as far away from home as one can get inside Conestoga. Getting quickly to the Mag is a key component in this unscripted plan.
Problem is, the Evers usually gather at the stations. Mag stations, street corners, any place where Travelers gather. That’s where they can annoy the most people.
They started showing up mere days after the tournament finals. At first, the groups of white-clad, chanting idiots were small enough: ten, maybe twelve people who lined up by the Mag stations. They simply stood there and repeated the same two words, over and over. When people tried talking to them, conversations usually went something like this:
“What are you doing here?”
“Spreading the word.”
“What’s the word?”
“Ever on.”
“What does it mean?”
“That we go on forever.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we are fulfilling our destiny.”
“I thought our destiny was to colonize a planet.”
“That’s blasphemy!”
In the beginning, the Evers would then attempt to out-chant the blasphemer. Lately, they needed only call on the services of the Keepers. There were always a couple on standby. The offending party (meaning anyone who questioned the Evers) would be taken away to be healed. Curator Absinthe Dormer thinks of everyone not conforming to her plans as broken.
By accepting the cargo he carries, Joshua has put a target on his back. He nervously shifts the bag over to his other hand.
He circles the area near Trieste’s central hub, hunting for an angle of attack. Like the other towns in Conestoga, Trieste is built in circles within circles: the houses in a circle around a communal lawn makes a block; the blocks in a circle around a common throughway makes a neighborhood; the neighborhoods in a circle around the community center makes a town. Trieste is smaller than the rest as it lies on the very edge of the map, near the forest encircling the aft bulkhead. From above, it looks like the forest has taken a bite out of her. Trieste is the smallest town with a mere two thousand inhabitants. Another twelve thousand live on the farms taking up most of the surface area from here to Atlas City and Lake Devotion.
The towns are built for walking and cycling. Labyrinths of walkways criss-cross the neighborhoods and connect to the meandering throughways leading to the community center and the Mag station. All the homes look identical; all the lawns and parks are basically the same. If you were to fall asleep in one town and be teleported to a different town, it would take a while to figure out in which town you were.
Would be great if he could be teleported away right now. He walks briskly past a lawn where a group of senior Travelers are doing morning exercises. The walkways between the houses are deserted. Most people are on duty, busy making Conestoga work. The eerie quiet makes him feel like a cat, sneaking around on some inscrutable cat errand.
Rounding the last house before the neighborhood throughway, the bag almost slips out of his clammy hand. Two Keepers amble down the throughway, straight at him.
For a wild, breathless second, Joshua’s body goes heavy and rigid, as if someone replaced his muscles with lead. A gust of wind, and he would topple like a cardboard cutout.
Then he does the last thing he expects of himself: he clutches the bag close to his chest, turns, and makes a break for it.
“Hey!” yell the Keepers, this time with something akin to indignation on their voices. They set off after him, of course, lumbering and noisy. “Stop! Stop or you’ll be sorry!”
He turns the corner sharply and ducks through the narrow gardens between houses. He emerges on the lawn where the seniors are wrapping up their calisthenics. Spur of the moment decision: instead of running around them, he barges straight through.
“Young man!” someone, probably the instructor, gasps.
“Sorry!” he offers and makes a daring jump across a hedge. The Keepers are still on him, but they are not fast enough. The dismayed geriatrics huddle in shock, forcing his pursuers to take the long way around the circular park.
He continues to run flat out, back the way he came, without any real plan. The Keepers on his tail will have called for backup by now. With the manifestation going on by the Mag station, there are sure to be more of them close by. Also, is that the sound of a drone? He steels himself. No looking around now, or he’ll lose precious time. Or worse, trip himself.
Why, oh why did he run? He’s a trusted advisor to the Curator! If he had explained the situation, they would have let him go. Hell, he might have had them escort him home!
This was not how the day was supposed to go. Not that any of his days since the tournament finals have gone the way they were supposed to.
He stumbles over a bump in the road and nearly pancakes the bag under his weight.
“Be careful!” a muffled voice protests.
“Shh! Not a peep!” Joshua scrambles to his feet, ignoring the pain where he scraped his elbow.
Back by the community center, he darts around the corner, lungs burning, and presses himself into the shade. His pulse thunders in his ears, nearly drowning out the noise of the Keeper’s boots. He risks a glance around the corner—and here they come, hunched and panting, their rifles bobbing in rhythm with their steps.
“Where the hell (huff) is he?”
“Why do we (puff) even care?”
Any other time, their dumb, droning voices would probably make Joshua laugh. He edges away from them, towards the back of the center. Here, the town of Trieste abruptly ends and the forest lining the aft end of Conestoga begins. He can’t not cast a glance up towards the sweeping aft dome and the tiny, circular knot in the middle. Where the hangar bay is. Where he was almost killed by Curator Dormer’s watchdog, Captain Cutler. He can still feel the hole torn in him by the captain’s rifle.
“It’s probably nothing,” one of the Keepers says.
“I’m not getting into anymore trouble because of you,” the other says. “You go that way, I’ll go this way. Call me if you spot him.”
Beyond the community center, the town ends abruptly. A grassy lawn stretches towards the wild forest and dimples towards the elevated Mag track. The grass down there looks tall enough. He doesn’t stop to think. Throwing caution to the wind, he simply jumps down the slope, landing on his behind and sliding all the way to the bottom. He ducks behind pillars supporting the track. Just in time, too. The Keeper comes up to the edge of the slope, scans the area, and turns back.
The track sings an electric tune. The train is coming. He can even see it. It’s crossing the waterfall bridge near the Sierras. He’s got maybe four minutes to get to the Mag station.
“Or I could stay here,” he mutters to himself. “Build a house. Settle down.”
He sets off along the track towards Trieste station. He’s not sure how to get past the Evers without someone noticing him. With any luck, the two bumbling Keepers are too embarrassed to call for help. And he can still play the advisor card.
Until they demand to look in the bag. If that happens, he’s done for.
He picks a spot between some trees to climb back up the slope and ends up on the square in front of the station. And there they are, the Evers, at least twenty of them, all dressed in white linens and togas. The official garb of the Stoa that makes them look like a gathering of very noisy, obnoxious ghosts.
Two Keepers flank the group, carefully watching the surroundings. They’re not there to make them disperse. They’re here to make sure nobody interferes.
He checks his uniform to make sure his grassy adventure isn’t too obvious, grasps the handles of the bag like a normal person and walks. The Evers’ monotonous caroling gets under his skin and plucks at his nerves as if they were guitar strings. They’re holding hands, swaying slowly and smiling as they chant.
He gives them a wide berth. Then one of them breaks lose from the group and comes running towards him.
“Joshua!”
He reflexively cowers, ducking to get away unseen.
“Joshua!”
The pitter patter of naked feet against the pavement. Someone grabs his, spins him around—and wraps their arms around him. Long, blond hair whips his face.
“Lilah?”
“Of course it’s me, silly!” He’s got a couple of years on her, but dressed in the white garb of the Stoa she looks even younger. Like she’s aging backwards. Sure, it was less than a year ago he saw her last, but fanaticism does strange things to people. “How’ve you been?”
“Oh, you know…” he says, trailing off. There’s no way to answer that question without touching on the thing that happened, and he really, really doesn’t want to. Not now. Not here. Not ever.
As if anyone will forget.
“What about you?” he asks instead, casting a desperate glance at the Mag train arriving with a whisper.
“I’m great! Isn’t it amazing?!”
“Is what great?”
“This! Our destiny! Isn’t it beautiful?”
Poor Lilah. A year ago, she might have said the same words, every syllable dripping with sarcasm. She used to be the funny one on his Pioneer squad. She would have made a great scout. Her smile now is so genuine it breaks his heart. She stares at him without seeing, expecting nothing but agreement. What he wouldn’t give to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, yell at her until the bottom drops out of her lies. But the Keepers are watching. Instead, he smiles wanly and nods towards the train. “I… have to go, I’m in a bit of a hurry. Duty calls, he he he.”
Lucky for him, she doesn’t catch the desperate tone in his laugh. “Right!” she trumpets. “Well, may the Future Children bless your duties,” she says, that vapid, vacant smile plastered across her face.
To his surprise, he has the wherewithal to smile back.
—
He puts the bag on the floor and shoves it under the seat. As the doors slide closed, he spots the two Keepers, still on his trail, working their way through the Evers. The Evers part for them, of course. They’re like ants, he decides. Different roles within the hive but working together. Joshua leans back and hides his face until the train accelerates away from the station. He made it, but it was a close call.
Of course, he will be getting questions. Multiple cameras must have caught him visiting the little lab down on Sub3/Engineering.
That damned Maester Fletcher! Why did he agree to anything that old kook said?
Sweat glues his shirt to his back. He keeps his heels against the bag until his calves begin to ache. It’s a long ride all the way around the Circle Line, and at each stop, he expects Keepers to barge into the car and grab him. It’s not until the train approaches Sendari that he starts to relax.
And as soon as he steps outside, he chokes.
On the sweeping wall lining the Mag platform, a minor swarm of bots are busy cleaning off graffiti the exact colors of his bright red-and-gold duffle bag. Two Keepers are standing guard, as though the bots require their supervision.
He doesn’t need to read the graffiti to know what it says.
WHERE IS IMOGEN HART?
The question began cropping up less than a tenday after the events of the tournament finals. Despite the Praesidium’s sincere efforts to stamp out the recollection of Imogen’s existence, it kept appearing on walls, billboards, windows, public art, Mag train cars, streets, and floors. Someone, or an army of someones, were defying Curator Dormer’s very unsubtle decree number two hundred and three: Defacement of Public Property.
“Hey!” one of the Keepers blurts out.
Of course. He was identified back in Trieste. They had plenty of time to send a couple of morons over to collect him here.
“Yes?” he says, his throat coarse.
“You’re Joshua Baker, aren’t you?” the Keeper says. The other Keeper has caught on and is slowly turning around.
“Umm, yes…?”
The Keeper casts a quick look around them. Then he grins and hisses: “Go Cannonballs!”
After the finals, every trace of aerobatics disappeared from the Connieverse. The Eye was shut down, the elevators grounded. The sports centers remained, but the clubhouses had been turned into regular changing rooms, all the sports memorabilia of a millennium gone, recycled. Reports of the Eye being structurally unsound had begun to circulate in the feed. Or it was too energy consuming. Or something. Bots had been sent up to start dismantling it. The Eye now sported gaping holes in its structure. The work had since then been stopped, and nobody knew whether it would get finished or even resumed. Conflicting news played against each other, moods shifted from one minute to the next.
It’s not random or unplanned. Joshua knows this because he knows the staff spinning this stuff for the news services. The Praesidium may have shrunk to a handful of Dormer’s closest associates, but the administrative staff has ballooned into an army of people carrying out Dormer’s agenda. Most of it consists of managing the flow of information. Or, he should say, disinformation. Every day, between ten to twenty-five new stories are born. A constant barrage of news and decrees and instructions, each one more confusing and outrageous than the one preceding it. Constant changes to the narrative make the news stories short-lived and unreliable, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
Anyway, aerobatics was a non-starter anymore. Except for this guy.
“I’m a big fan!” the Keeper says now in a hushed voice, as if his enthusiasm needs an explanation.
“Thanks,” Joshua says, relief running like cool water down his sweaty back.
He hurries past the two Keepers and the cleaner bots. Makes a beeline for the bike dock and weaves his way through town, out to the Consitional compound. Home.
—
His parents are still out, and he hurries up the stairs to his room. He glances at the things that used to mean something to him: pictures of his team, The Cannonballs, of him and Eleanor Bowman, of him and Imogen. A life so remote and distant now that it almost seems like it never happened.
He tosses the bag on the bed and collapses on the floor with a sigh. He hates being this scared.
“Is it safe? Can I come out now?” a muffled voice says.
“Yeah, sure.” His legs are wobbly, but he manages to stand up and unzip the bag.
“Thank you,” Pea says, rising out of it. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble?”
Joshua sits down at the foot of the bed, another sigh. “Walk in the park.”
Imogen Hart waits to be executed at the hands of the warrior nation Carran on the planet Alamea, at war with the neighbouring Outlanders. Joshua, wracked with guilt at his betrayal of Imogen and her companions, is still on the giant spacecraft Conestoga, a star ship holding thousands of people who had hoped to colonise Alamea, not knowing that it was already inhabited. And Lex is living with the Outlanders who live in complete isolation in an almost ideal environment. The starship is run by the Curator Dormer, who is gradually undermining any sense of free will within the population for her own ends. Carran is determined to destroy Conestoga and when Imogen, rescued by a Carran splinter group, comes to the starship and tries to negotiate she and her companions are sent to the dungeons.But there are still pockets of resistance aboard, not least Maester Fletcher and Pea, Imogen’s almost human bot, and soon Joshua and everyone else will have to fight or face annihilation.
Like all good science fiction books this novel builds fascinating worlds, intriguing scientific advances with anti-gravity technology, faster than light travel, Bolzman drives, living cities like that of Kalani, as well as strange aliens like Stripes, with its tentacles, extra sensory communication and the ability to heal things. An added bonus is that many of the intelligent machines or bots, like the inboard computer on the shuttle and Pea herself, have a great sense of humour. The characters, both major and minor, are real people with hopes and fears, so we get Joshua’s guilt and Imogen’s indomitable spirit, as well as the visceral excitement of the action.
My one concern was that the author plunged us so completely into the worlds of the first two books that somebody who had not read them would find the considerable number of characters and their different situations hard to follow at the start of this one. I would have appreciated some reminders about Lex, for example, his relationship to Imogen and how he ended up with the Outlanders, or who the Consitionals are. Just a few lines in each case would do it. Thereafter the author marshals the various factions and situations with aplomb.
So however helpful it may be to read the first two books, this one is a fearsome read in itself and I can recommend it unreservedly.